


The Universe Is Calling (Do Not Turn Away)

by colorworld



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: : ), Bisexual Character, Bisexual Female Character, Bisexual Peter Parker, F/F, F/M, Female Peter Parker, Found Family, Genderbent Peter Parker - Freeform, IronDad and SpiderDaughter, Irondad, Lesbian Character, Lesbian Relationship, New Friends, On Hiatus, Original planet, Penny Parker - Freeform, bisexual penny parker, idk if indefinitely or if a few months but, literally everyone knows that tony is penny's dad except him, penny has alien powers, penny is an alien, penny is more powerful than she knows, steve and thor are cool uncles, w/w relationship - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:55:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 31,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21555841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colorworld/pseuds/colorworld
Summary: An alien crashes, bringing news both good and bad from the far reaches of space, resulting in Penny and the Avengers departing Earth for the blue planet of Chamano.AKA: Penny gets a crush on a charming alien girl, finds out she has extraterrestrial powers, and that there is a lot more beyond Earth than she could possibly imagine. However, a threat lurks within her reach, and another is coming in the form of a mad titan. I guess you could call it "Penny Parker's No Good, Horrible, Very Bad Day"..Or Tony's, since being the father of a super-powered genius space-spider teenage girl can be challenging and distressing. He's not her dad...right?
Relationships: Carol Danvers/Maria Rambeau, Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, Mention Of Carol/Maria, Penny Park/ OFC, Penny Parker/OC, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker/OC, Peter Parker/OFC, background Clint Barton/Natasha Romanoff
Comments: 9
Kudos: 19





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is half crack, half chaos, half seriousness. Idk it's gonna fluctuate through out the story. This may be my longest fic i end up posting here. I'm expecting......40-60k words? I'm gonna have like 12 chapters, and i already have 22k. I swear i have no idea how these chapters got so long. 
> 
> ANYWAYS! I hope you enjoy my work! If you do, kudos and COMMENTs are highly appreciated! Your support and thoughts make my day! Enjoy!

Penelope Brielle Parker simply knew that things were going to change from the very moment in time she spotted a girl from space fall from the sky. 

It was just a normal training day when Friday alerted them to something crashing through their atmosphere, crashing and obliterating some of the freshly trimmed lawn. It was definitely the least of their worries, though. Their bigger worries included that a girl just came from nowhere, looked so human with her caramel skin, yet looked so alien with a golden light gently glowing around her body that lacked energy. 

Call her shallow or say it’s not the best thing to come first to mind, but Penny immediately noticed how absolutely gorgeous she was (wondering if the alien even had a gender was a useless thought at the moment). Short curls of chocolate brown and freckles with violet and cerulean bioluminescent glow were quite enchanting on her. It ignited a fire of curiosity in the teenage trainee upon sight. Besides her observations, however, she was completely on the same page as the others: what happened to her?

Her injuries were not too gruesome, thankfully enough. While bandaging up a cut on her hairline, the tall figure’s eyes flutter open, revealing orbs of cognac behind her lids and whimsy lashes. Her lips come open to speak, but someone beats her to it. 

“Everything’s alright,” Natasha Romanoff smoothly assures, standing beside the medical bed where the alien girl lied. “We’re treating you for some cuts and a fracture in your left hand, but there’s nothing else. It’s weird considering how hard you fell.”

She sighs. “Yeah, I can’t believe I’m not dead. You, uh,” She jolts up to sit upright, noticing the other people in the room, some looking tenser than others such as the brunet man against the wall directly across from the bed and a man twirling around a drumstick in a corner to her right. “You really have a nice atmosphere for me to not have died while coming in. Didn’t think Terra was that nice.”

“Terra?” One of the men in the room squints his blue-green eyes in confusion. He stands straight with his arms crossed. 

“Yeah, this is Terra. I, uh, have heard it been called Earth, but Terra’s the official name for this place...I need a name, I can’t keep thinking of you as tall blondie with a shield on his back.”

“Steve Rogers, ma’am,” He answers warmly, not feeling too threatened. She looked like a kid, not to mention unsure about her surroundings. It didn’t look like he’d need to worry about her trying to kill everyone, or at least for the moment he wouldn’t. 

The girl just looks at him for a few seconds. “...Stove Ruggers mom?” Her brows scrunch. It looked like she just swallowed foreign dirt.

Penny erupts into a huge, obnoxious snort, causing her to slap her hand over her mouth when she realizes what she’s done. She tries to ignore Tony’s commentary beside her about it. 

“Wait!” The girl puts a finger up. She pulls out a petite device from her ear which everyone stares down as she messes with it. Soon enough, it’s back in her ear and she suppresses embarrassment. “Sorry, repeat your name again?”

“Steve Rogers,” He replies, but with a bit more discomfort this time. 

“Steve Rogers!” The girl repeats with a grin. “That sounds so much better than Stove, no offense to anyone named Stove.”

“There’s no one named Stove here,” The man with a drumstick, known to the others as Clint, pops into the conversation. 

“Okay,” She nods. “Well, I’m Galira Gahn and I’m looking for something. You know if you could help me find it?” Her face is full of hope and optimism, her complexion glass-like and healthy in the room’s light. It was almost like she didn’t realize her hand was fractured. 

“Would you mind telling us where you’re from first?” Natasha inquires curiously, sitting at the foot of the bed with a facial expression of patience, but also anticipation from her. She took a sip of the post-workout shake she made only fifteen minutes ago. These fifteen minutes, however, felt more like a whole hour. 

Galira pushes some of the covers off of her, revealing the top half of the semi-metallic gold suit that hugged her curvy body. She kicks her legs around so she’s sitting in Indian pose. “I’m from Chamano?”

All she receives in response are non-understanding stares from everyone surrounding her, almost as if they’d seen the mouse on a computer move all by itself. 

“Where’s Chamano?” Penny meekly wonders aloud. Her posture is a bit shortened, obviously nervous. That’s kinda what happens when an alien girl crashes on Earth. At least she didn’t seem hostile or like she wanted to kill anyone. 

“Oh, yeah, you’re right, the planet is a bit isolated,” Galira looks at her wrist and pulls up a holograph, tapping around with ease to show a graphic of her home planet. She gestures to the screen. “Chamano,” The girl points, then zooming out to display the planet, a moon, and other planets orbiting the sun of Thasis. “You know the Thasis sun?”

“We only know our own sun,” Steve replies. 

“Well, we know of other suns, but we’ve never actually traveled to them,” Tony contradicts. “It’s all Nasa’s work.”

Galira bites her lip. They did say Terra was a bit backwater, but it didn’t bother her as much as it bothered some. “Alright, well, we tracked a meteor crash to here,” She swipes over to another graphic depicting fire and smoke on a cloudy August day. “This was a year ago. Is the meteor still there?”

“Uh,” Tony starts over to the bed, Penny deciding to cautiously follow behind. “That was cleaned up a week after it happened,” He recalls clearly. His own crews assisted with it. “Just south of White Plains.”

“Yeah. See, here’s the thing,” Galira begins an explanation. “Our DNA, that which travelled with the meteor after the Hushulian attack. Our Autralan DNA? We need it back. We need whatever it’s infected, whoever it’s infected. It can pass from thing to thing, creature to creature. Then,” She shows a map. “It infected something and traveled into your city to right here,” She taps her finger over the location. 

A gap grows between Penny’s lips, eyes large with the memory. “...Oscorp,” She whispers, a disturbing tone of horror in her voice. This couldn’t have anything to do with that spider or Norman Osborn...right?

“But then here’s the kicker,” Galira continues. “It travels throughout the city consistently every single day. Its common locations include here,” She shows a location in the one and only Queens neighborhood. 

“You’ve been to Oscorp, Pen,” Tony turns to look at the five-foot-five girl beside him. “Anything suspicious?”

“Uh-um,” Penny blinks and stutters, then comes a swallow. “...The spider.”

Tony looks back at the screen. She’s told him the tale of the spider that bit her, leading Penny to the Spider-Girl persona. That couldn’t be it. The spider was just another lab experiment from the scam that Oscorp was. The zig-zag path includes Midtown High School, the Parker residence in Queens, the very compound they stand in right now. He takes a good moment to think, comprehending the map and possible factors. 

“Oh. The DNA? It’s in this place right now.” Galira taps a button. 

Penny jolts, shutting her teeth against each other, gritting out a swear and then gasping for breath when the pain was over. When Tony starts to fire questions at concern of her as Steves barks out a question at the alien, she gestures to him in a fanning motion to signal that she was fine. “I’m...not Autralan. Autralan, you said?”

“My species, the native superior one of Chamano,” Galira clarifies. “...Yeah. Yeah you are.”

“I’m fully human, Terran, whatever. I’m not an alien,” Penny shuts her down clearly with strength. “Both of my parents were human, my aunt is human, my uncle was human, period!”

“You were human. Now you’re quarter Autralan when the DNA got into your system,” Galira explains. “Don’t worry, you’re not some grotesque slimy alien, I promise,” She laughs, giving off a brilliant smile, white teeth behind her lips are identical to a human celebrity’s. 

“Miss Gahn,” Steve interrupts. “I think we’re gonna need to sit down and explain from the beginning.”

* * *

The story of a civilization’s birth, catastrophic half-death, and uprising was enough to definitely have Penny stressed out. Not to mention that their dead monarch’s DNA was hers, now. 

The teenage spider-child lies flat on the bed of her compound guest room. Yes, the TV was on, but she was not listening. She was too much part alien to be listening to the TV. Penny didn’t even know. She thought she was bitten by a radioactive spider that was Oscorps lab freak, not a spider that was infected by alien DNA. Let’s not even mention how they need the DNA-infected to come back with her to Chamano, a planet far away from Earth and a planet that was not Earth, and for a reason not known to her yet. 

Penny was clueless as to what she was supposed to do, as were the Avengers probably debating it outside in the living room or somewhere far from where she was. She hadn’t told May or Ned or MJ. She was freaking out alone, no idea how she could even talk to someone.

But then her stomach growled. She could at least stop her hunger. 

She took a moment to slide off of the bed, dressed in a maroon-colored sweatshirt and matching sweatpants. Her hair was tied on top of her head with a scrunchie in a fat bun. The skin of her face was without makeup, some hormonal acne on her chin showing up but she didn’t care, at the moment. All she cared for was a sandwich or something. 

Penny steps out of her room, slippers gently making noise against the immaculate floor of the compound. Noise is minimal, the only thing heard besides her presence is the TV in the living room. Hoping no one was there, she enters the space to find only one person: Galira. 

Her eyes fall to the floor, hoping she could quietly sneak past her and barely utter a word to her. Penny didn’t loathe the girl, but it was really terrifying to face her right now. 

“I know Kinhda at home will kill me, but Terra is just not that undeveloped. In fact, it’s a lot like us,” Galira acknowledges, body lying down on the sofa, eyes peering to the tv until she leans up and gets onto her feet. Her eyes find the blonde girl’s. “I like your name, by the way.”

A strange micro-expression snaps in and snaps off of Penny’s face before she looks up. “I’m sorry?”

“Your name is pretty,” Galira softly repeats, strolling towards the quartz counter-top and sitting on it in Indian pose. 

“Thank you?” Penny blinks before going back to making a peanut butter jelly sandwich out of the healthy bread with seeds that Pepper liked as a substitute to white bread. “I actually thought the same of yours,” She hesitantly adds. If she was blushing, right now, she was surely screwed. At least the lighting was dim, most lights off beside one in the kitchen and the tv never ceasing. Maybe it hid her expressions enough. 

“Ah. It’s just a family name. My mom’s sister’s and now mine. Not as bad as, uh...Cocaine?”

Penny nearly chokes on a bite of sandwich she was taking. Thankfully, she’s able to eat it without trouble. “...Cocaine?” She repeats in shock. 

“Yeah, it was normal before I learned it was a powdery drug here on Terra. Now I can go back to Chamano and tease him about it,” Galira smirks. 

Penny can’t maintain a quiet, all-to-self manner, anymore. She lets out a giggle because she was dying and Ned would be, too, when she told him. “Is-is there someone named Marijuana, too?”

Galira’s jaw drops. “...Yeah.”

Penny’s head drops onto the icy counter and her laughter is muffled against her sleeves. She bangs her fist against the quartz a few times to add to it. 

“What’s Marijuana?” Galira tilts her head in innocent curiosity. 

Penny finds the strength to lift her head and show her face, taking in the girl’s breathtaking freckles. Again, she better not be blushing. “Another drug.”

“Lovely,” Galira shakes her head. Her expression changes to one that shows concern, however, instead of the playful and cheery one. “How are you feeling about stuff?”

Penny pauses, putting down her sandwich and her eyes drooping to the counter. “Um...Okay.”

“Well, okay is better than I want to throw myself off of a cliff, right?”

“Oh, well I feel that a lot, actually,” Penny clicks her tongue. “...I wish I knew sooner.”

“I do, too,” Galira slides away from the counter to stand again, starting towards a tense Penny. “But know you know. It’s your choice to come back or to stay here.”

“That’s a huge choice for me, Galira,” Penny frowns, tucking her hands in her sweatshirt pockets. 

“You can call me Gal if you like,” Her lips purse just a bit, Galira’s eyes having the ever-so-slightest of a golden glow in its beautiful color. 

“Gal…” Penny nods. “B-But yeah, it’s actually kinda, uh, monumental for me. I’ve never been to space.”

“That’s okay,” Galira assures. “Chamano’s atmosphere is safe for humans. It’s safe for almost all species, anyways, so you’ll be okay. As for the planet itself? It’s actually a stunning planet. May I show you?”

“Oh!” Penny takes a bite of her sandwich and then nods. “Yeah, of course.”

Galira brings up a holograph from her wrist gauntlet. “Basically, it’s a mostly ocean planet, but the ground there is completely crystal. All the grass is artificial and such. The days are similar to here’s. Sun rises at seven in the morning, eight at night. I swear the planet is your planet’s twin, sometimes. Creepy, right?”

Penny’s blue-green orbs stare into the imagery Galira swipes through. The oceans are purely turquoise, almost like a tropical place, but everything surrounding the beaches was definitely not tropical. The small sand beaches were pale blue, fine and with people walking on it gracefully. Behind the sand led to the normal crystal land she spoke of: semi-transparent, but with a beautiful pearlescent sheen that was not irritable to the eye. In the next picture were markets, a flood of colors attacking Penny’s eyes. People looked pleasant, food and items plentiful, the same thing for them shopping at what looked like a shopping mall with higher technology and sleeker design, maybe eight stories high of stores and looking like a place that had the pristine scent of a five-star resort. Then an incredible palace was shown soaring into the sky, wide just as it was tall, multiple skinny spires shoot up into the sky like ice crystals. 

She sees the amazement in her eyes, escalating Galira’s pride. “Our palace is five times the height of your planet’s tallest building, Burj Khalifa?” She swipes into some interior pictures of the architectural masterpiece. 

Penny’s eyes felt like they were nearly bulging out of her skull. “Five times the height of Burj Khalifa?” She clarifies in a state of absolute awe. 

“Yeah, it’s absolutely massive. Biggest thing on the planet. I can show you around since I’ve been to every nook and cranny.”

“That would be amazing,” Penny whispers. She’s barely able to comprehend the flood of different places and things in her vision. Can her eyes even handle the saturation? She was sure not. “That’s really bright,” Penny shuts her eyes tight. 

“Oh, don’t worry, these pictures are enhanced, I swear it won’t hurt your eyes in person. Anyways,” Galira swipes the photos away to leave a blank screen. “What’cha thinking?”

“Uh,” Penny blinks. She was thinking about a lot of things. There was the fact that she was quarter-alien and that the government of Chamano wanted her to come to their home because she held their DNA. God, she’s never even been to space before. This was all an intriguing, yet torturing reminder that there were bigger things than herself, and not just the Avengers or Shield, but beyond her own planet and in an infinite universe of infinite things and people. Despite all the entities in her brain, all that came to her mouth was a simple, “Nothing.”

“That’s not true,” Galira insists with the shake of her head. “Tell me. Correct me if I’m being nosy or peculiar, but opinions are meant to be voiced.”

“Well...I don’t know if I can go to Chamano,” Penny admits, twiddling her thumbs against the counter top.

Galira tilts her head. “How come?”

“It’s dangerous, unknown, my aunt has no reason to let me go, especially not without her, and someone has to make a living for two people in one of the most expensive cities in the country.” Penny didn’t feel like giving her aunt a heart attack while she was at work, and she never had the urge in her life. Besides, there was school, all the homework, the tests, missing Ned and MJ, probably many other factors she didn’t even think of yet. 

The Autralan girl hums, about to suggest solutions when Penny continues and she lets her lips close for moments more. 

“And it’s not like Mr. Stark would let me go, nor would the other Avengers. They would need to come with me and I don’t know if they’d be up to that.”

By this time, Galira has started to randomly forage through the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of water. “Oh, he’s not your father? Can I drink this, by the way? Should I pay for it?”

“Huh?” Penny looks up and to her right. “No, you don’t need to pay for it, you can have it. And Mr. Stark? He’s not my father, absolutely not,” She answers adamantly. 

“Really?” Her voice is legitimately surprised. “It’s just that you stood close around him. Uncle?” 

“No, we’re not related. He’s…” Penny trails for a few seconds, scraping around her brain for a good adjective. People have mistaken them for father and daughter before, the Daily Bugle once having wrote a hideous article about them when there was a fancy gala and he had her as a guest (she was sure that was the most beautiful she’s ever looked in her life). “He’s my mentor,” She settles. 

“Oh. Well, you two seem to be on good terms?” Galira’s voice is somewhat meek, aligning with the look in her eyes. 

“Yeah, he’s actually really great. A while after I got the spider bite, he found me on Youtube and recruited me,” She explains casually. It was crazy how time flew from him spitting out May’s walnut loaf to him sighing about her putting on Spongebob on the living room tv. It was amazing how she was here, who she was around, the relationship she’s developed. There were many ways you could interpret the relationship, but for Penny, it was exactly how she verbally depicted it: a mentor and a mentee, or at least that is what she says to herself. 

“That’s cool.” Galira gulps down some water. “Wow. Even the water is nearly the same.”

Penny playfully squints her eyes and laughs. “Lovely observation you’ve made. You writing them down, too?”

Galira hums. “You know, I think you should talk to Mr. Stark about the whole Chamano thing. I don’t think you’ll regret at least visiting. There’s a lot out there to see.”

Ah, yes, Mr. Stark. Penny really did hope she wouldn’t need to argue with him, that would be the worst thing in the world, and don’t even get started with her aunt. She loved her to bits and pieces, but there were no words to describe how much she wanted this. And it wasn’t even just May, she had realized that Mr. Stark was always trying to watch out for her, a painful way to think of it considering that was exactly like Ben. So when that idea popped in her head, she had to shut it down, and shut it down she did. As for the opportunity to see outer space? “...Yeah, I know.”

“Think about it for me? ‘Cause I’m going to bed. I was offered a guest room out of the kindness of their hearts.” Galira yawns and starts away, water bottle being tossed from one hand to the other. “Goodnight, Penny.”

Penny stands upright. “Uh, goodnight Gal,” She rushes to return as her willowy body exits the room, leaving her own figure alone in a dimly-lit kitchen. Yeah, Galira was plenty right that she should talk to Mr. Stark and May, but how?

“Is Mr. Stark asleep yet?”

“No, he is actually heading your way, Miss Parker.”

Penny sighs. “Even better,” Her voice is quiet and sarcastic. She pulls a hairband from her pocket and starts playing with it, even when he comes in and greets her. “Hey,” She replies. 

Tony’s in a baggy ACDC t-shirt and some black sweatpants, hair a bit ruffled as if he’s been in bed or just lied down on a sofa. “You doing alright, kiddo’?” He inquires softly as he makes his way over to the teenage girl. 

“Um, okay,” Penny murmurs nervously. “...What about you?”

“I’m just glad Galira wasn’t some alien warlord plotting to implode the planet,” Tony lowly jokes. “On a brighter note, she’s a teenager like you. Not to mention super-powered and crashed from space. I think she has flight-skills just like Carol.”

Penny nods in silent agreement to the reference about the intergalactic heroine they met half a year ago when she came to check on the Earth. She got along well with her, Tony, and Penny was sure she had a bit of a thing for Natasha, but that never bloomed into anything to her knowledge. The Avengers and the captain had settled on an agreement that she would come by at least every six months, providing them with updates and such. 

“Do you wonder if you have those flight skills? There’s supposedly more in your fancy alien DNA than you’ve uncovered.”

“I’m primarily concerned about the fact that I’m being offered to travel off-planet.”

“Yeah, I don’t know about that one,” Tony shakes his head a bit. “Theoretically, we could, but what guarantees we don’t get attacked on the way or ambushed once we land?”

“Chamano barely has the population of Norway, I’m sure it’s safe,” Penny tries confidently, although sure that her attempts would be futile. 

“There are also people outside of Chamano.”

“Galira said the sector is generally pretty safe as well.”

“She could be saying that just to get you there.”

“Well...trust goes both ways.”

Tony leans against the counter where the sink is across from Penny, the blonde girl turning around when he moves. “Why do we need to trust her?”

“It’s a nice feeling to.”

Tony bites back the urge to say that he didn’t know what that felt like, but he remembers things have changed with time towards Steve and the others. It’s not as bad as it was before. He actually considered each and every one of them his friends. It wasn’t that way for the first few years. Wanda was still a personal tough cookie for him, but they weren’t enemies. He and Barnes had broken some of the ice, but the rest would probably melt with time. However, all he sees in Penny is this innocence and positivity, not yet ruined by life’s events. Wow, that really reminded him of how old he was. “Do you trust my opinions?”

“Yeah, of course I do,” Penny does not skip a beat in her response. 

“Kiddo, you’re not a space alien, first of all-”

“Never thought I was,” Penny interrupts him. She decided to shoot her hairband like a bow and arrow and it lands over a decorative fake peony flower in a ruby red vase on the counter. 

The corner of Tony’s lip curls for a second before continuing. “Second, do not have an identity crisis. This doesn’t change the fabric of who you are. Now you just have new information to have in your huge library that is your brain.”

“Incredible words from Tony Stark, huh?” Penny smirks sarcastically.

“You bet’cha. But tell me the truth, Pen,” His voice gains gravity, eyes heavy with the paperweight of fear. “Do you  _ want  _ to go to Chamano?”

The expression on her face is immensely and utterly perplexed. “Of course I do, why would I not?”

“Well, I sadly can’t use homework as an excuse anymore since it’s the middle of June, right?”

Penny rolls her eyes, starting to walk around the kitchen randomly, somewhat of a coping mechanism of talking to him and many people in general on tough topics. “No...But she showed me the planet. I have no words to describe the wanderlust and the pretty much desperation to go.”

“Would it kill you to not go?”

“Yes?”

“I think it could kill you _ to _ go.” It hurt to be negative, but the anxiety seemed to be the puppeteer of his words. “We don’t know what’s out there-”

“Well, what if I said I trusted you to keep me safe?” Penny blurts out, but by the time she realizes she’s said something a little odd, Tony’s brain gears are already visibly spinning. “That’s…” Penny starts slowly. “What the Avengers have always done. Sometimes I wonder how the world would spin around without you all.”

Tony bites his lip a bit harshly, but he doesn’t care. All he sees is Penny’s eyes and all he feels is worry and fear, remembering the Chitauri was a stab in the chest, not just like if Penny got hurt. But he sees her eyes…”Let me call May.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Penny and the Avengers depart the planet, a miracle that May let her niece (daughter) go. Aliens, aliens, more aliens, new planet, and Steve gets teased by the team because they can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is long so sorry but im just........idk. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy! comment if you like it or have feedback! 
> 
> ALSO FACE CLAIMS cause i never gave you those. If they dont work, tell me in comments and ill just put a pintrest link idk
> 
> Galira: https://i.pinimg.com/564x/db/2d/b7/db2db76bc1d2e75f65471a5d6fc8a7be.jpg
> 
> Sovial (so-vee-uhl) https://i.pinimg.com/564x/1c/7e/7b/1c7e7bab0dddcadb5f96e9b21f001131.jpg
> 
> Cikkma (sick-muh): https://i.pinimg.com/564x/6d/96/31/6d9631bc01eca80bc1be4709217ebcaa.jpg
> 
> Astoss (aa-stuh-ss) https://i.pinimg.com/564x/56/f1/68/56f168189f92f7f73740f04390bbe74d.jpg
> 
> Baxdol (bax-dull) : https://i.pinimg.com/564x/17/84/9b/17849b178521965859ae2e716ab6eb78.jpg
> 
> Kindha (kinn-duh) : https://i.pinimg.com/564x/84/b6/3f/84b63f18bbb171a3a2ffa1cd0a309122.jpg

Convincing May was absolutely not an easy feat, but he was sure convincing himself was an even more hefty task to take on. 

Tony was up late for the first time in a while, breaking the streak of going to bed by ten p.m by the latest with his wife. His voice was calm, yet exhausted by two in the morning with a can of coke and stress in his eyes. He could hear May sigh over the phone, just as pained as he was with the topic. “I trust you, Tony...Bring my baby home safe.”

He took the answer, of course, but he didn’t understand why she did trust him. Tony knew all he seemed to do was fuck up since the very day he was brought into the world. But for his mentee’s sake, he wouldn’t argue. The two of them exchanged a few more words before hanging up the call, Tony leaning back into his chair and calling it a day. 

Despite the throbbing headache he got, at the time, the look on Penny’s face made all of it worth it when he informed her of her aunt’s decision. A few less hours of sleep was an easy price to pay for the grin on the teenage girl’s face, and five times more would still be feasible. 

Everyone around Penny knew it: she was absolutely thrilled. In private, though, she was just as nervous. New planet, new atmosphere, new world, new aliens, new everything. She prayed that she was not going to throw up on the ship. That would be disgusting. Hopefully, her merciful history of not getting car, air, or sea-sick also counted for outer space flight. 

Most were going, but some were staying. Bruce was definitely not going because it would create endless anxiety not to mention the risk he was to anything and everything as the Hulk (Tony believed it would be okay, but he wouldn’t force his friend to deal with anxiety). Wanda and Vision were going to stay along with Bucky and Sam for a mixture of reasons. The top one was that the team needed to have at least some people on the Earth in case of any threats that came up, and they had enough skills to deal with it or at least hold it off until the rest of them returned, so it was a sufficient plan. Tony, Steve, Thor, Natasha, Rhodey, and Clint would all go to Chamano, six people Penny had good relationships with. 

A duffel on her shoulder and a backpack on her back, Penny gazes at the Avengers’ Quinjet in awe, positioned to head up into the sky. “I...didn’t realize it could go into space,” She murmurs, almost embarrassed. 

Thor walks up to stand beside Tony who was on the right of the teen. “We had the assistance of Captain Danvers from last time she visited since she brought back a plethora of technology info. You weren’t here,” He explains.

Penny turns her head, her lips almost forming an “o” in confusion. “Wha-where was I?” She blinks, tempted to cross her arms over the coral t-shirt she wore with white jeans, the scent of a wild bluebell perfume from Jo Malone that Pepper had bought for the girl’s birthday (she conserved the somewhat pricey bottle) was sprayed on her wrists and neck. 

Tony smirked. “You were on a field trip.”

Penny paused to think for a moment as the two Avengers started up the Quinjet ramp, looking frustrated when she figured it out: “That stupid trip to the transit museum,” She groans. Stupidest trip of all time, in her opinion. The only reason she went was to spend a bit more time with Ned since she hadn’t been much lately. 

The seven of them load their things onto the jet, Tony sitting up front configuring technological things with Friday, the rest of them settling down with the exception of Clint who looked like he was fawning over his arrows, or that was at least what Penny observed. There were only seven. Where was she?

“These clothes are pretty comfy, by the way, Penny, thank you!”

“Hm?” The blonde sweeps around and sees Galira approaching the ramp dressed in a goldenrod-colored sweatshirt and a pair of loose navy-and-white-striped linen pants. “Your welcome,” She nods. Penny didn’t see the harm in letting the alien raid her closet, and she wasn’t sure what would fit her, but it looked like letting her take something off the hangers worked perfectly fine. It looked pretty cute on her, too. 

Galira reaches the top of the ramp. “Yeah, I just looked for whatever was baggiest since I think I’m a bit bigger than you. Uh,” She brings up a conversion chart from her holographic gauntlet. “They barely just registered Terran sizes into the system, I don’t know if this is accurate. My size four is your size...eight?”

Penny looks at the screen and pulls the tag from Galira’s sweatshirt to see. “Yeah, an eight.”

“‘Kay.” She slides past the few-inches shorter girl and takes a seat in the back just a few feet away, strapping herself up.

“So GG,” Clint calls out of the blue from across the Quinjet, his high-tech bow in hand. Curiosity that’s simply characteristic of him glitters in his eyes and his body’s posture is relaxed, a bit spread out in the chair. 

Galira squints her eyes at him. “GG?” She inquires.

“Galira Gahn,” Clint clarifies. “It’s a nickname and an acronym.”

“Actually, it’s an initialism,” Thor contradicts the skilled archer who’s sitting right beside him.

“Yeah, but Gigi is a name and a word so it’d be an acronym,” Steve lets himself into the conversation from the front of the jet.

“But it’s not a name, it’s a shortening for the name,” Thor continues to banter on with Clint. 

“The point is that birdbrain and thunderboy are both too lazy to just call you Galira, so they shortened it up,” Natasha smoothly cuts in and says nothing else, getting up from her seat to go do something worth her time. 

Galira blinks, amused by the vibe she’s surrounded by, a vibe that was casual, yet energetic and fun. It reminded her of home, but still different with everyone’s different quirks. “Okay…Yeah, that’s fine. What is it?”

“You think anyone will be trying to kill us on the way to Chamano?” He asks somewhat jokefully, ignoring the roll of eyes Natasha gives beside him. 

“Whatever you do, do not pass by Quda,” Galira warns sternly, draping her legs over the left arm of the chair despite its awkward positioning. “It’s radiation and chemicals, whatever the hell it is because no one knows because we can’t get close to it or we die, will basically set the ship on fire, suck us in, and bury us in its merciless ground.”

Everyone looks at her and then at each other nervously. 

The freckles over the bridge of her nose and under eyes strengthen in its glow while putting her dominant index finger up. “ _ Supposedly _ .”

“Oh, supposedly,” and “oh, okay,” are among the words uttered by the Avengers. 

“Are the coordinates set?” Steve looks over, sitting in the co-pilot seat, Tony opposite of him, nodding back when he nods. “How long’s it gonna take?”

“Disturbingly short,” Tony replies. He en-largens the map path to the crystal planet. “Just six hours.”

“Sounds like an easy space road trip to me,” Rhodey pops in from behind. “And we won’t even have pit stops like a normal car.”

“Nope,” Tony agrees. “Six hours straight like a normal car. This is faster than a car, too.”

Natasha closes a weaponry cabinet she was checking. “Ready to go, boys?” She directs at the other Avengers. She’s putting her shoulder-length auburn red hair up in a bun at the back of her head, some lip balm is freshly applied to her lips.

“Yes ma’am,” Tony nods while checking a few settings. When he’s done, he leans back and tries to ease the tension in his body that won’t go away. 

“What’s wrong?” Steve asks softly while Thor and Clint debate something else silly in the background, serving as the two teenage girls’s entertainment. 

“Hm?” He blinks, looking over at his just-about-polar opposite. “Nothing’s wrong,” Tony insists like he usually does in scenarios like these, but he sighed, hating how much the forties-born-man’s eyes can peer into your soul (what was worse was that sometimes they looked cold as hell if you pissed him off). “You know how much I hate space after twenty-twelve,” his voice is quiet, brown eyes so bambi-like that your heart strings might just break. 

“I know, Tony. I think it’s going to be okay, though. If we can survive that, we can survive anything,” Steve’s flooded with positivity like it almost always seems to be. 

“Remember the part where it took a giant green screech creature to wake me up from being dead? What wakes me up the next time?”

“You wake up for Pepper.”

A gap grows between his lips because, God, do Steve’s words hit him like a train from in front and behind, every once in a while. An image of her appears in his mind, her skin dappled in the cutest freckles, her crystal blue eyes showing so much soul. Oh, how her laugh and smile made him happier than he ever thought he could be. As much as he didn’t like to admit it, Steve was absolutely right, no excuses about it. He would wake up for Pepper. “...You’re right,” His voice is merely a whisper. 

“Where is Pepper, by the way?” Steve asks, then hearing some laughter in the background. They were always up to something, especially if he wasn’t. 

“She’s, uh, actually heading to Zurich for a business conference right now,” Tony says before biting a smidge of his lip, eyes losing focus while they gaze out through the front window. 

“Nice place to have a conference,” Is all he murmurs in response. 

“Yeah. She said maybe I could come back soon enough that we could take a quick trip to Zermatt, or something, but I doubt it. There’s probably not somewhere to de-stress on Chamano, is there?”

“Dunno,” Steve replies with no clue. “Neither of us know what’s out there. But whatever it is, we’ll face it together.”

Tony scoffs. “Typical golden boy answer, dont’cha think?”

“Better than nothing. But it’s what I believe. You have my back, Tony. Always.”

His words demand Tony’s eyes to observe him, and to observe him closely. Crazy enough, there is authenticity. When he first met him, there was no trust, and Cap didn’t trust him either. Then the Chitauri battle happened, plus all the training and missions they’d done as a team. It blossomed and grew surprisingly well, especially considering how they were the farthest from alike. The two got along well enough to get the job done, and that was what mattered to him most, but he would admit there was a bit of a friendship, something that he found hard to come by. “Thanks for the kind words, ice boy.” Totally a great response: sarcasm and a nickname (one out of maybe fifteen he had for him).

Steve rolls his eyes. “Sure thing, metal head.”

Tony sets the jet into proper launch position. “We good, guys?” He calls to the back of the ship.

A chorus of hums and “yeah” come from behind him. 

Just a last few tweaks and checks and he pauses for a moment, eyes gazing into the sky that would soon be darkness and stars. What the hell would be out there to kill him, to kill the team, to kill Penny? What could he do to protect her?

“Tony,” Steve’s voice comes softly. “It’s okay.”

He takes a deep breath before launching the Quinjet for space and beyond. 

* * *

In all her life, Penny never thought she’d be an astronaut. 

Technically, she wasn’t, but it was practically the same, especially when she caught sight of the planet Galira was from. Its hues were such a breathtaking view, reminding her of Turks and Caicos or the Exumas Islands in the Bahamas. Ocean seemed to take up maybe half the planet, the rest being five different continents about the size of North America in loosely rounded shapes in a darker blue-gray hue. There were faint clouds at the very far right continent, half of the land barely in sight considering the curve of the sphere, but none, otherwise. The sun in the far distance is similar to their own, minor solar flares popping out of the star every two seconds, it seemed, burning in orange and yellow color. A single pale-blue moon orbits the planet, maybe twice the size of Luna. She’s in awe of absolutely everything, surprised she can speak. “Where are we landing?” Penny inquires to her new friend who stands beside her looking out the cockpit window just as she does. 

Galira puts a finger out against the glass. “Right there, fifty...I don’t know what you use to measure distance on Terra-”

“Miles, but more commonly kilometers,” Tony answers for her, letting Friday calculate the distance directly on the window that doubled as a screen. “Uh, forty two miles, twenty minutes from the coast, or so?”

Clint comes out from behind and chuckles, shaking his head. “Holy shit.”

“Language!” Steve bursts, but it’s too late to retract his scolding and he has a look of defeat. 

“I’m sorry,” Natasha walks up to the back of his chair and randomly ruffles his hair around. “What was that?” She teases with maybe too big of a grin, a rare occasion to mess with him like this. 

“Yeah,” Tony smirks. “What was that, Stove?”

Steve sighs. “I’m never going to live it down. And would you stop calling me ‘Stove?” His voice raises in irritance on the second sentence. 

“Look Stove-”

Steve shudders and looks behind him. 

“It’s Chamano!”

“Oh, God, not you too, Thor,” He murmurs. 

“Anyways, land ho, fellas,” Tony declares. “Galira, where do we need to land?”

“Uh,” She turns her attention to the billionaire. “They’ll just send up lasers that bring us down, if you know what I mean?”

“Lasers?” Steve furrows his brows.

“It’s like tons of light that beams us down. Don’t worry, it’s harmless.”

Tony was definitely not comforted, but he kept his mouth shut, swallowed, and waited quietly until he did, indeed, see white light encase the ship and slowly, but surely, pull the ship to the ground. God, what a lovely way to soothe his nerves. Not.

The ship descends and Penny’s eyes light up like lightbulbs, feeling wanderlust ignite in her bones. She could see the palace Galira had raved about and her jaw drops. The Zenara was definitely five times the size of the Burj Khalifa if not even bigger. Massive was not enough of a word for it. Perhaps godly was. 

Behind her as they’re maybe a hundred feet in the air, Thor mumbles something about it being like Asgard, but blue-er, and Clint is rambling to Natasha, Rhodey mentioning something to Sam and Galira, but Penny is still ever-so-silent. 

“Kid?”

Penny turns to face him.

“You okay?” He softly checks on his mentee while the world around him is in chaos. They’re on a new planet, he has a traumatic fear of space (that’s what happens when you send a nuke through a wormhole, resulting in anxiety attacks like the one he had this morning), there’s millions of other species among these stars in their universe, but the only thing he can focus on at this moment in time is her. 

All she figures to do is simply nod. “I’m fine, Mr. Stark…” She was initially confident in her statement, but it then went away like turning off a light. “I think?”

Tony starts to grin. There’s no logical explanation as to why he does this (not even he would understand), but he lays his palm over Penny’s smaller hand. At the very second he does realize what he just did, he yanks his hand away as if he lit his fingers on fire before Penny could even look at him again.

There were no words between them about the interaction. The next words came later. 

A minor, EDM-music-like sound rings through-out the ship and Galira heads to the rear of the jet, pulling up a holographic of someone, the person’s hair is black and freckles dotted their skin. “I missed youuuuuuuuuuuuu!” 

Galira shakes her head. “You couldn’t wait, Sovial?”

“No could not!” Her voice sounds feminine, yet quite boyish, but not in a deep, guttural manner. “Everyone really missed you-they, honest to Uth, really thought some sort of Terra monster gobbled you up, or that some Ravagers snatched you.”

“Wow,” Galira is not impressed. “Such little faith. Did Kindha teach you that?”

“No, Kindha actually thought you’d be just fine, it was Baxdol that had his doubts.”

Her eyes grew to the size of a mini muffin. “Oh, it was  _ Baxdol _ ?”

Penny watches from the cockpit, eyes noticing all of the girl on the screen, getting a glimpse of Galira’s joyous reflection. She does nothing but stand, absorbed in observation. 

“Hey, who’s gorgeous girl back there?”

Upon hearing that question, she immediately blushes and walks forwards a bit, Galira answering Sovial’s inquiry with her name. 

“She’s the DNA holder?”

Galira nods. “She’s the DNA. And more.”

“More?” Penny blurts, too late to stop herself.

“Considering your...Terran Spider-like abilities, we think there’s more to you,” The Autralan beside her explains with a gentle grin. 

“What more could there possibly be to me?” There was a legitimate amount of confusion in Penny’s voice. She was smart and she was sticky. What else about her could be new? It’s not like there were uncovered abilities, Penny found them all out when she was thirteen and fourteen. Could she even handle the weight of new knowledge? What else was going to be thrown in her face because she came here? All questions to go unanswered until landing on uncharted territory, or at least for the Avengers and all Terrans. 

“Tons,” The two Autralans answer at the same time. “You’d never know unless you came, and you did,” Sovial adds. “It’s gonna be really cool, I swear.”

The ship docks with a mechanical clicking noise, making Penny’s eyes jolt and look over to the Quinjet’s ramp coming down. As the light hit her face, illuminating her blue-green eyes, she still found it hard to believe that Chamano’s oxygen was so similar that humans could breathe on this planet. For maybe a whole hour, the teen racked her brain, wondering why this planet was such a perfect goldi-locks match for Earth, but to no avail. But, hey, there was sunlight, and she was itching to feel it. 

Before Tony can even speak to her or before Steve can even give at team-talk, the look in Galira’s eyes is all it takes. The Autralan girl steps out at a normal pace, but Penny makes an impulsive dash, gravity speeding her up so that it’s like flight to reach the ground-and the ground is aqua sand around the cream-golden color of the concrete. There’s something different about the air here. It’s better than how it was before the spider bite, after, and anything she’s ever felt. The oxygen here was unlike anything she thought possible. It was exhilaration...Had she ever actually breathed before?

Galira is grinning from ear-to-ear just to see Penny in this state of awe. “Perfect, isn’t it? The blue sky seems to go on into infinity, so does our ocean. Even our stars, at night. The Milky Way never ceases to impress anyone.”

Penny’s mouth is agape. “...I love it here.”

The Autralan teenager kneels down in front of a lining of native flowers that lined the palace ship runway. She pulls one up from the potted turmeric-gold color soil like snapping a twig. “It’s our national flower: a Zulia,” Galira explains, getting back onto her feet and handing it to her new friend. 

Penny brushes a thumb over the vibrant petal, saturated in a mixture of magenta and turquoise, lime green speckles all over it. “It’s so pretty!”

Galira giggles and her head shakes up and down enthusiastically, her eyes nearly glowing under the Chamanoan sun, as do the golden highlights in her chocolatey short curls. “...What?”

“Huh?” Penny blinks. “Nothing!” She claims quickly. Was she staring? Oh, God, she was staring. 

“GALIRA, COME ‘ERE, QASUL!”

Galira swoops around and runs to meet up with a group of teenagers Penny turns to see in the distance. In the background is the monolith she’s waited to see, the largest thing to ever meet her eyes: The Zenara, the palace of Chamano's Jalasia, and she would get to go inside of it. 

Why was this happening?

Clint pops on his sunglasses as he comes to Penny’s side. “What’cha think, kid?”

Penny’s mind is blank while she tucks her hands into her pockets. “Sunny.”

Clint chuckles and gestures her to walk down the runway-a lengthy runway, with the rest of the team. “There’s, like, nine million people in the city and it bit you. There’s nothing that’ll explain why you.”

Her facial expression shows realization. “...Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Penny agrees lowly. 

“Penny! Come meet this squad of weirdos!” Galira yells, already halfway over the bridge with a group of other teenagers, some with human skin tones, some with colors found on the rainbow. One of them was super tall, another particularly plump, one had an oddly stoic expression, another lanky. Then there was the girl she saw over the call, ‘Sovial’, she heard, with silky black locks and a beaming smile. 

“Go.”

Penny shudders, looking behind her. Natasha did that a lot, but it’s been a little bit less lately. 

“We’re coming right behind,” The redhead assassin assures. She, as would the others, will be watching closely for any anomalies or strange things. It’s not like the teenager would ever have no eyes on her in hostile or foreign situations. 

As Galira waves her hand to signal for Penny to come over, she finally agrees by starting towards them. In the minute of time it took to walk to them, she noticed one of them wave to her and another cross their arms, yet maintained a friendly face…Okay, Penny was just telling herself that. She didn’t look friendly, but not too hostile, either.

“Sound off?” Galira says.

“Cikkma Salvoa,” The plumper girl who’d waved to her introduces.

“Kindha Kaloba,” The tallest one puts out his hand to shake. 

While Penny puts out her hand in return, the boy she deemed “lanky” said his name was Baxdol Corfa, the girl she was unsure was friendly actually smiles and introduced herself as Astoss Yail, and she learned that Sovial’s last name was Dex within a short moment of time. “Nice to meet you.”

The group nods and Astoss murmurs “back at’cha,” in response.

“So what can you do?” Cikkma smirks, shifting her weight onto her right leg. Her navy hair had gentle waves, contrasting her unnaturally (or at least to humans) lavender-toned skin.

“Wh-what do you mean?” Penny is taken back. 

“Powers,” Kindha answers simply. “Ya know,” He spawns his hand and out comes shades of silver, energy morphing from his caramel palms. “Anything like this?”

There is a gap between Penny’s lips. “N-no…”

“She didn’t know she was part Autralan until now, remember?” Galira reminds her friends. “She doesn’t have an Autralan skill-set. Penny does, however, have a Terran one. She has super-strength and heightened senses. Everything has been locked in the gene, though.”

“I’m sure you can lift more than Baxdol,” Sovial contains a snicker. 

“What’re you teasing me about now, Sov?” The boy squints his eyes up and at her. (He was a bit shorter than normal and she was a bit taller than normal).

“Well, I’m really excited to see what you can do when you activate the gene!” Cikkma declares brightly. 

“Same,” Astoss adds bluntly. 

“Thanks,” Penny nods. She didn’t mean to sound nervous or kinda short. Everything here was new to her. The people, the culture, the planet. God, she was so small, and this universe was so massive. The sun was a particle, and Penny was not even that.

“Your mom is probably going to bawl if she does not see you in ten seconds, Gal,” Kindha bites his lip. 

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” She waves him off. Galira looks at Penny. “Shall we go inside? A lot of things waiting.”

“Uh-um,” Penny isn’t sure what to say, but she spots the Avengers almost to the entrance, having passed the group of teenagers while they were talking. Tony is looking back directly at Penny, but Thor says something from his left side, causing him to signal to her that they’d be inside before heading on. Finally, she nods. “Yeah, sure.”

Anxiousness was one feeling out of a good few, and most of them had no name. Just descriptions of emotion combos like fear, excitement, joy, cautiousness, a strange-but-Penny-like cocktail that she expected from the beginning. That was one thing she shared with Tony, who when she returned to his side once entered in the palace, was immediately the first to greet her. “You good?”

In (another) state of awe, Penny does not respond. For she sees a grand foyer that was more like the size of a mall, and a bustling one with city-like features. It’s an atrium, soaring to unbelievable heights, inconceivable luxuries inside. A marble-like substance in a copper-and-cream color is their floor and staircases, somewhat glossy and it makes your shoes clop against it, but they currently stood on a forest green rug that welcomed them. A holographic screen spins slowly, hanging like a chandelier in the atrium from five feet above them all the way up to the ceiling that she could barely see. A material comparable to sapphire is the molding on the grand stairs that Penny can’t even see the top of, spacious capsule elevators off to the side. There were a thousand things to see and she couldn’t truly register it all at once. 

“Penny?”

She blinks. “I’m sorry-I’m good,” Penny reassures. 

“You happy?”

The corners of her lips can’t help but curl. “Yeah...Yeah, I’m happy.”

“Oh, Galira!”

Penny turns her attention and sees a tall, curvy woman embrace the girl and press a kiss to her head, then firing concerned questions and cupping her face.

“That her mom?” Tony wonders aloud. 

“I guess so…” She continues watching them for a few seconds. 

He didn’t even think about what he was saying, he just did it. “See, that’s how I felt when you bonked your head into a wall while on patrol, your tracker jammed, and we couldn’t find you for two hours last week.”

Penny pauses, her attention not on the daughter and her presumed mother. It was now on Tony, leaving her gobsmacked, visible on her face. 

“It was a joke, kiddo,” He immediately corrects himself seeing the expression on his mentee’s face. When she walked forwards upon someone calling her name, Tony murmurs, “I was still worried out of my mind,” when he thought she couldn’t hear him.

Penny stops in front of Cikkma who’s casually leaning against the wall, eyes appearing cheery. “Hi.”

“Hi. I think you’ll probably want to meet President Naka?”

“President?” She blurts. Since when did going off-planet entail meeting a president?

“Yes,” Cikkma confirms. “I think he wanted to as soon as you got here. He’s probably in the situation room with advisors and stuff.”

“Oh...Okay,” Penny quietly acknowledges. She notices Natasha looking around the room like the observant person she was (a thing in the spy nature). Tony had just been looking at her, but he instantly shifted is eyes to Rhodey as if he was already talking to him. He probably didn’t want to look like he was constantly watching her. 

“So, Penny,” Galira approaches her and Cikkma, now away from her mother that was making a phone call to her father. “Whad’ya think?”

“This...is the most beautiful place I’ve seen in my life.”

The freckles on Galira’s face starts to glow a bit more, practically matching her smile. 

“Miss Gahn!”

Penny is quite startled by the loud and clear voice, her nails nearly piercing the skin of her palms, for a moment. The hallway the trio stood in front of now had people coming down it towards them: a sextuplet of guards, a quartet of men and women, and a man she assumed to be the president Cikkma spoke of. She could tell by his tall figure, confident appearance, and how he led the crowd of people. Plus, he just looked like a typical diplomatic middle-aged man with dark gray hair and steel-ish blue eyes.

Galira puts out her hand and shakes it with the president’s. “This is Penny Parker,” Her smile is practically prideful. “The DNA bit a Terran creature that bit her, but the gene remains mostly unlocked. She does have abilities, though. Penny, this is President Naka.”

Unlike many politicians, this man didn’t have a vibe that said that he was the almighty superior, but more kind and bright. “Hi, Miss Parker,” He goes to shake her hand.

“H-hi,” Penny shakes his hand, a handshake she felt like she’s done a thousand times over, at this point. It was a bit uncomfortable, but, for the most part, it seemed to melt when the Avengers came up to the scene. Tony was at her side and Galira at the other, so she was not alone and without the support of ones she trusted. 

“Who’re you?” Thor takes the initiative to inquire who he is since none of the team heard. 

“I’m Toris Naka, Chamano’s president,” He replies. “And you?”

“We’re the Avengers,” Steve cuts in to answer confidently.

President Naka clicks his tongue. “Never heard of you,” He says with regret.

“Didn’t expect you to. We’re not an intergalactic thing. Earth-reserved,” Tony clarifies.

“Technically, the Chitauri thing is intergalactic,” Clint pops into the exchange, not able to help the commentary.

Naka’s eyes go wide like he’d seen a ghost holding a knife. “What Chitauri thing?” He inquires, the people around him also looking just as curious. 

Natasha clears her throat, arms crossed in a comfort manner. “Almost a decade ago, the Chitauri invaded one of our cities through a wormhole. Stark eventually ended up killing the army with a nuke,” She explains. 

The president gapes for a long moment, definitely not putting Tony at ease. “The Chitauri have tortured the planet on-and-off since we first developed structures here…” He directs his eyes at him when he finishes his sentence. “Please know we’re forever in your debt.”

“Oh, no, no, no-”

Naka’s facial expression is with deep urgency. “We wouldn’t be here right now if they didn’t die that day-”

“No, buddy, we’re good,” Tony turns down. 

“There’s no debt to pay,” Thor echoes what the group was thinking. 

Naka just nods. “Well...In my eyes, you’re a legend here,” He chuckles. 

Tony hums in response, nervously playing with his thumbs, clueless as what to do, especially considering his fear of space, but here he is for Penny. He had to admit, so far, so good, but something was going to happen, he just didn’t know when, where, or how, and that was probably going to induce an anxiety attack sooner or later. 

“Anyways,” Naka decides to get over his worship-slash-shock phase. “My staff will be happy to show you to your suites, and I’ll need your daughter for a bit of time for explanation, Mr. Stark, was it?”

“Oh-” Tony starts. This again, huh? Even off-planet, it happens. What next? Pepper is secretly thinking she’s a one-night-stand accident with a random woman?

“Penny isn’t actually his daughter,” Steve corrects the president. 

“Oh,” Naka’s lips seem to round a perfect “o”. “I’m sorry, I should’ve figured considering the last name difference.”

“It happens all the time,” Clint makes a bit of a face, quite used to it. “You’re good.”

Rhodey is a bit bristly and has not taken latch to the friendliness, completely, just yet. “Where will you be taking Penny?”

“We need to explain the full extent of her power, the gene, the everything. One or some of you can come with, if you like, I understand it’s a strange experience on a new planet,” Naka acknowledges. 

“I’ll go,” Tony barely takes a nanosecond to reply, Thor coming soon after. It’s not like he wanted to leave Penny alone, and he was glad he had backup.

“Great,” Naka gives a single nod. He shifts his eyes to some of the guards and they gesture to lead the other Avengers to the suites, leaving Tony and Thor to head off with the foreign president and Penny to God knows where (yeah, this wasn’t Tony’s favorite day). 

The state of awe was not faltering. It continued while they went down a new hallway that had a roof maybe one hundred feet high with a soaring skylight showing the blue sky doming above. There was a family walking off to the side, two parents holding their tiny son’s hand. Other people talked, a group looking like a diplomatic meeting considering an alien of a different race walking with other Autralans. 

“Lovely place, don’t you think?” Thor breaks the ice. 

“Mmmmmmmmmyeah?” Tony guesses. He’s still apprehensive. “Can’t believe I’m breathing,” He grits through his teeth. “My nerves must be shining through my eyeballs.”

“They do that a lot,” Penny smirks.

Tony squints his eyes at her and she squints hers in return. “You know, you’re the reason I’m here...But I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Penny merely hums. 

“Sorry, kiddo, no outer space unsupervised.”

“Aw man,” She frowns sarcastically. “Ruins tomorrow’s plans.”

“I wonder why I’ve only heard of this planet once before,” Thor wonders aloud, eyes taking another lap around the seemingly endless palace, shockingly comparable to the one on Asgard. “Their palace is an imperial size, their planet is huge, they have a highly manageable population, and they have powers. This place…” He loses track of what he wants to say. 

“What about it?” Penny looks at him curiously. 

The group takes a turn, the scenery quickly changing into lower ceilings and dark, unique lighting. Penny is fascinated and her excitement radiates through her soul. Tony sees it so clearly beside him. Despite the anxiety and fear, he can’t help but feel good about seeing her smile with such joy. 

Doors open up and the room is black and electric blue. Black is everything except where blue outlines the tables, the doors, the floors, the screens, and many other little things. A conference table sits in the center of the room, right where they were then instructed to sit down. Penny sits in between Thor and Tony, almost feeling like she had two dads with her at a school conference, except this was definitely not the case. No, just off-planet being told about how she was a super-powered alien. Not just super-powered, now, but a being that wasn’t Terran. 

The president sits down in a seat across from them, Penny silently nervous, but it didn’t rival Tony. Thor was plainly curious. “Dark color scheme really contrasts everywhere else.”

Naka doesn’t reply to the commentary. “Autralans are a quiet species, explaining our isolationist position in the Nova Empire. We don’t deal with them, much, and they don’t deal with us. That’s part of why it took so long to find you, Miss Parker.”

“How so?”

“It would’ve taken some talking with the Nova Corp to send out an urgent search team, but we figured we could handle it ourselves and that it was our own politics. Considering our issues, we didn’t need to add other parties to it,” He explains smoothly. Naka drums his fingers against the table. “None of you know what happened here?”

The three shake their heads. “Not even I have, and I’m from Asgard. We tend to know about most planets, especially ones like this.”

“Well, we’re a unique case.” The president pulls up a holographic, a map of the planet. “Like Terra, we’re not a fully united planet under one system. You have nations with different government types, as do we. Different languages, some different culture, different approaches to conflict. We’re the nation of Jalasia, but there are four others.” Naka starts to point the color-coded masses of land out. “The Khallans, Qorshis, Nyumbians, and the Uffias. Let’s just say that the Uffias are not exactly popular.”

“What, they’re communists? Dramatic monarchy?” Tony guesses. 

Naka is near somber. “He’s a totalitarian tyrant.”

“Oh.”

“Zulmur, is, I mean. His people are treated like literal garbage, but you get benefits if you’re in their military, so that’s why it’s so goddamn big. We used to be massive, but then we lost the need, so we shrunk down and we focused on technological advances to take care of it rather than men and women on the ground.”

“And how did that work out for you?” Thor inquires. 

“Very well until the bastard slaughtered a hundred men and women of our own.”

Penny’s jaw drop. 

“They never disclosed the death toll of theirs...We think it was a few thousand.”

Sometimes thoughts like that made her nauseous, but thank God it wasn’t this time. 

Naka pulls up imagery of a place that looked like a whole different universe from their own. Everything seems to be black, black like volcanic ash or charcoal, but they didn’t know what it was. Walls were dusty and where they weren’t, they were stained in spatters of gray, outlines of heads to go with it. There’s no one around, a ruined crop field is in sight, a well is broken in the center of this village. In the far distance, a castle is the color of blood, yet has a classy sense of luxury, contrasting the horror of a broken land. This is no home, no village, it’s closer to hell.

Thor spots a body in the corner of the photo and swallows, hoping that Penny does not see. “And this has been a...issue...for how long?”

“Since the dawn of our time,” Naka answers regretfully. They’re at the south pole of the planet, so we didn’t know they existed for millennia until maybe a century ago. It was fine, at first, we tried not to associate with them, as did the others, but that failed by the time they invaded the Khallan state of Eulcor. It’s where all of the Khallan’s turil comes from.”

“What’s turil?” Tony asks hesitantly. He’s discreetly monitoring Penny beside him. He knows that she’s sensitive to a lot of death, or horrible things like the Chinese concentration camps of Uighur Muslims, the Rwandan genocide, Nazi Germany, or stories of labor camps in North Korea. Comparing it all in his head leads him to conclude that this might just be worse. 

“Their energy source. Eulcor has been dark for three years, the capital is scarce, and the rest of the nation has to use an alternative that’s barely half as efficient. Khallan is less prosperous than it used to be.”

“What about the other two?” Thor cuts in. “The Qorshis and the Nyumbians,” He points to their countries. Qorshi is at the north pole and Nyumbia is a man-made island in the sea. 

Naka bites his lip. “Qorshi’s fine, kinda like us, just trying to deal with the cold, as usual. As for the Nyumbians, they moved off land a decade ago to buffer Uffia, and it’s barely working. It may seem all good and dandy in Jalasia, but there are refugee camps of Khallans right outside our borders.”

“Seems to be a lot of buildings here, why can’t you just house them?” Tony asks like it’s a simple solution. 

“Uffia will capture other nationals, indoctrinate them, and release them into the refugee populations to hide, to torture them,” Naka explains with pain and frustration in his voice. “We’ve been screening, testing, building more houses, and more refugees keep coming. Resources run out, we have to pay people, and the government has poured so much money into it. Sometimes we send our own children to help the screenings, the monitorings, all of this assistance with the possibility they die because some of them will be preparing to kill!”

“What do you mean your own children?” Thor’s blatantly confused. 

Naka bites his lip. “We have multiple terrorism task force teams...some of them are teenagers that sign up with parental permission.”

“I’m sorry, you employ children to deal with a refugee crisis and terrorism?” Tony is immediately alarmed. 

“We barely have forty thousand people here and there are only two hundred to deal with two thousand refugees,” Naka replies, his voice exasperated. “They train like hell to deal with threats worse than management, so nothing’s ever happened, but as a parent, you wonder,” He shakes his head. 

“Is your child one of them?”

“No, but my nephew is. I worry just like his mother and father. We all do.”

“You want Penny to join your underage death squad?” Tony radiates an icy bitterness, protective and impatient. 

“We want her to have that choice. I understand she has abilities, but I want her to train for a week and see what she thinks. Stay here or don’t. Despite our challenges, it’s comfortable, there’s a plethora of food, everyone goes to sleep at night never worrying about what they’ll wake up to-”

Tony shoots up from his chair. “I thought I knew irresponsibility before, but I was wrong-”

“I want to,” Penny blurts boldly. God, she was tempted to slap her hand over her mouth, but there was no reason to. What was done was already done. 

Tony pauses, processing her words. What process was there to have? There was no shock. Of course, Penny wanted this. The young, naive, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed energy that could only be found in someone like her. God, he always makes the wrong choices, right? Why is he right? The look in her eyes really had won the battle against trusting his gut, and now he pays the price which is her safety, a price you never pay. 

Thor senses the tension quickly. “May we have a moment?” He asks the president. Once permission is granted, he gestures for Penny to head to the back of the room with him and Tony. 

“I really want to do this!” Penny whisper-shouts. 

“Absolutely not,” Tony shuts down firmly. 

“Stark, I believe this man’s words. There are thousands of miles between the other nations-”

Tony snaps like a giant breaking a pencil, eyes a wildfire. “You think I fucking care, Thor?” He seethes. 

Being startled is an understatement. Mr. Stark’s warmth and sarcasm and laughter is a literal gift, but his rare anger really shakes the ground and most of all her. 

“I don’t know a damn thing about this place except that they let their children fight wars they can’t win on their own and maybe not even at all!” His voice sounds like his blood boils. 

Penny works up the will to speak. “Mr. Stark-”

“I can’t just let you become some teenage alien warrior on a foreign planet with a high chance of getting killed-”

“Then why do I get to go around one of the most dangerous cities in the country stopping bad guys?” She raises her brows. 

“It’s not without protest-”

“She does have a point,” Thor murmurs.

“You’re on thin ice, Sparkles,” Tony eyes him. 

“Mr. Stark, just seven days! Seven days to learn about this place, to understand what it all is!” Penny pleads. “There’s more about myself that I don’t know and that I would’ve never known if Galira didn’t crash outside of the compound yesterday. I have to know. I  _ have _ to.”

Tony is still, filled with the anxiety, thoughts of her hurt, thoughts of her dead, thoughts that plague him day and night. Any of them could die here. Granted, any of them could die anywhere, but, God, are they far from home. Knowing nothing of the universe beyond Earth absolutely killed him, but it would kill him to leave the planet, or so he thought earlier. That’s what Penny wants to do, she wants to learn and she wants to see, a bright young woman who wants to see it all. The universe gave a candy-loving child a big ol’ lollipop the day Galira crashed. What is he supposed to do? Take it away? He’s thought about it, but to no action. So now he sees her eyes with all of its desperation, hope, and such strong soul. 

“Tony,” Thor begins. “...We can defeat any foe or solve any problem.”

“No we can’t,” He whispers hopelessly.

“We have so far. What’s to stop us now?” Penny asks softly. “New heritage and a fucked up planet?”

“First of all, language, before Cap scolds you for it. Second, yeah, I think so.”

Penny sighs and Thor comes to be a balancer. “If needed, we can leave if something arises, but I also don’t anticipate the whole Jalasian or the whole Uffian army coming to kill us. Besides, I think I, sparkles,” He rolls his eyes at the nickname, “Is more powerful than any Autralan, and your technology, Stark, just as mighty.”

“The palace bigger than Burj Khalifa begs to differ.”

“Don’t be such a debbie-downer!”

“I still can’t believe Steve taught you that lame term.”

“Please? ...Please, Mr. Stark?”

A long moment of silence and anticipation. What he says dictates whether they return to Earth now or in seven days. What he says might just dictate good events of total disaster. “I just want to keep you safe,” His voice is just barely audible.

“I know you do. I know you  _ will _ ,” Penny assures confidently. 

Tony loathes his answer. Period, plain and simple. “...Okay.”

At that moment, Penny swears she just wants to leap to give him a giant bear hug, but she refrains and just smacks her hands together. “Really?” Her eyes are lightbulbs. 

“Really.”

Thor smiles. “Wonderful. I guess we’ll be taking a long excursion.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> introducing a planet and new chars in this way was a strange process but whatever. i tried. I hope you enjoyed! :D


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now staying in the palace, some breakfast is munched, some shopping is done, and Penny gets to explore her powers creating extraordinary awe and horrifying shock.

As Tony bites into his food (surprisingly good, like an aqua blue pancake that tasted like berries), it once again hits him that they stayed here. 

No problems had occurred, so far. They slept well in the luxurious rooms of the palace, fifteen-hundred-square-foot suites with balconies and master bathrooms with spacious soaking tubs, not to mention Clint saying that the bed was the most comfortable he’d ever slept in. And Penny seemed to be more energized than all of the electricity in the United States combines, vibrant like vacation pictures of Hawaii edited to be over-saturated under a sunny sky with golden sand with Hibiscus flowers and drinking water from a coconut. There was not a second without smiling or awe, such curiosity, and ten times more than normal. Was it all worth it? Everything he felt for this moment? He was thinking so. 

Once again, it was a clear-skies day, but Pepper said the vitamin D was good for his depression and anxiety, not to mention just in general. Yes, it was beautiful here. Beautiful until the Uffian army invaded. 

“I told you it’d taste good,” Penny smirks, eating the same meal as him with a glass of water. She had put her hair in a messy bun. Not messy like the girls on Instagram or Pinterest with stick-straight hair, but a bun at the top of her head with frizz around it and a dull sheen from her hair’s cuticle. The teen had put on her makeup and gotten dressed, eyelids covered in a thin layer of golden shimmer and her lashes black with mascara. She’d pulled on a bright red t-shirt and a matching pair of leggings (a birthday gift from Natasha, especially with the Lululemon price tag), her most worn pair of tennis shoes, and a zodiac necklace hung on her neck. The best part was the everlasting grin she seemed to have almost the whole time here. Curiosity glowed around her, through questions chirped when thought of. She was excited to explore, she was excited to learn about her supposed new powers, and she was excited to see Galira. 

“Hey, if your pancakes had yellow splotches on Earth, there’d be a problem,” Tony points out. “And if your fruit was this spiky, it’d be inedible, but these spikes are soft and squishy, and they release juice that I swear tastes like cotton candy in your mouth, so.”

Penny laughs before taking another bite. “I might gain a few pounds from eating these alone. I might come home and not be very happy about the scale.”

“When you come home, May will probably be scolding me for letting you have that big of a sugar intake if this is as sugary as we think,” Tony corrects. “And Pepper will be like ‘Tony, do you have a muffin top’?”

“Unfortunate occurrence,” Penny shakes her head before gulping down more water. “Why don’t you drink more water?”

“Because I was born and raised on coca-cola,” Tony replies simply. 

“I don’t know, Mr. Stark, if you’re scolding me on these pancakes, you should really re-think every can of soda you have,” She smirks deviously. 

“You’ve been telling me that since you saw me drink my first coke, kid. Addiction never changes.”

Penny rolls her eyes and hums. “So when can we go see the city?”

Ah, yes, a question to skyrocket his nerves. The master procrastinator is unable to procrastinate, this time. “Ummmmmmmmmm-”

“‘Cause from my balcony, it looked incredible. And Naka, for some reason, gave us tons of money to go spend. Something about a gift and contributing to the economy.”

“Of course he did,” the billionaire responds. “Well,” Tony draws out, “We can go with the rest of the team whenever they’re ready, I guess.”

Penny immediately frowns. “That’s a shame. Clint takes a long time to do his hair.”

“Oh my god, you’ve seen it too?”

“And I thought you took a while, Mr. Stark.”

“Ah-don’t turn this back on me, young lady-” He jokes. 

“You take a solid ten minutes to perfectly gel your hair for events.”

“Correction: it takes five-”

“Still takes forever.”

“Seemingly.”

“...Seemingly...not," Penny finishes with a demon-like smirk. 

Tony rolls his eyes. “Anyways. Enough about hair and more about,” Tony points to her for a second, “You.”

Penny’s face contours into confusion. “What about,” She puts up quotation marks, “Me?”

“What do you think of those other kids, for example?”

She merely shrugs. “Honestly, they seem great. I haven’t gotten a bad vibe from them, and I’m really good at getting bad vibes from people despite how much I want to see the good in everyone.”

That was incredibly in-character for Penny, and Tony knew it as she spoke. “I see. What about President Naka?” He quizzes.

“He’s alright. No mortifying vibe, but he’s not an angel, either. There’s good leaders and bad leaders.”

Tony nods before receiving a text from Rhodey. “Uh, well, they’re downstairs, and we’re almost done with our food.”

“Who is?” Penny tilts her head just a bit to her right.

“Rhodey and Clint. Turns out they’re gift-hunting for Lila and the Barton kids.”

“Buy them weapons and they’ll be satisfied,” Penny suggests mischievously. 

“I wouldn’t even buy you a weapon.”

“Remind me why I have a spider-girl suit, again?” She tilts her head a bit. 

“Professional and trained usage. Not personal.”

Penny takes her last bite and sips some more water. “Pray the sugar doesn’t mess with my blood sugar, too much. Either way, I’m ready.”

The two head downstairs and meet up with the other men before heading out into the city, finding public transport that they had written down to use. It was so different from the New York City Metro, pristinely clean and colorful with content faces versus insanity and morning grumpiness. A family giggles in the corner while the speaker announces that they have arrived, the doors opening up to a stop where an elevator is in front of them. 

“That was easy,” Clint says, stepping out. 

“Yeah, man, that barely took two minutes,” Rhodey agrees, the elevator door closing once the quartet was inside. “Earth, step up your game,” He murmurs. 

“What were you thinking of getting for Lila, Platypus?” Tony inquires. “Maybe I can help.”

“Like any other toddler, she likes little girl toys, so I guess if they have a doll or something here, that should so,” Rhodey replies.

Stepping out into the open of an off-Earth city was a unique experience like no other. Lanterns of any color on the rainbow hang in various places, people roam the streets in peace, vendors make sales to satisfied customers of all different appearances. Many had natural, human-tone skin colors, and some not human such as red and blue. It’s energized, but in a way that you, too, can flow with it, and not an energy that you get so lost in. 

“Wow,” Is all that Tony says, at first. “These are the cleanest sidewalks I have ever seen.”

“We’re on a planet that is not Earth and the first thing you notice are the sidewalks?” Rhodey judges. 

“Among other things. I see flying droids around and their version of a freight ship is flying through the sky at a decent pace.”

Penny jolts her head up upon hearing a low, nearly bone-chilling whir in the sky. It was normal for Jalasia to have freight ships go through the skies with that much noise, but it was usually not as loud. Some were faster, some were slower depending on the cargo and its weight. “That thing is huge,” She observes the size of this freight, in particular. 

“I want one,” Tony declares like it’s no task, just like he can buy another building. 

“What, is Stark Industries gonna start selling intergalactic ships, now?” Clint comments. “Does it come with alien pilots?” He jokes. 

The quartet continues strolling through the streets with mild caution. So far, this city seems to bustle, having all sorts of shops from luxurious to simple and cute, food coming in incredible varieties. A candy parlor here, a meat kabob shop there, they pass an apartment complex that looks as tall as the Empire State Building and as luxurious as a beach resort from fifty years in the future, a mother putting a jacket onto her daughter off to the side. There’s a fresh smell that’s like a tropical mixture of plumeria, banana flower, and pineapple coming from a beachy-themed shop they pass next. 

“Can we go in there?” Penny stops in front of it, intrigued by the bright colors and the happy scenery, seeing signs in a language she doesn’t know. Hopefully one of them meant stuff was on sale.

Tony merely nods and they head inside, feeling chilliness of a well-air conditioned boutique brush across his skin. When he looks to his right, there’s a woman coming up to him dressed casually, a tray in hand with what appeared to be a fruit candy with some sort of chocolate-like substance on it. “Would you like to try some?”

Thank, God, their president had given them earpieces that would translate, or else he would have no idea what to do. “What’s in it?” He asks, hoping that it translates back their way well. 

“Jenjeby fruit covered in sweet guila!” The girl answers with a smile. “We’re also selling bags of them,” She directs her attention to a few feet behind her, “right over there, if you’d like to buy some.”

Tony picks one of them up, turning it around in his fingers before biting into it. Its texture was somewhat jelly-like, but also reminiscent of an orange slice. He kept racking his brain for what it reminded him of, but to no avail, for this snack was too unique and unlike anything on Earth. And it was really, really good. “Wow. I guess I’m gonna go buy one of those bags.”

Penny turns to see who was giggling on the other side of the boutique before going back to look at the selection of clothes in front of her. They all had such vibrant colors and gorgeous fabrics, some nearly identical to silk, some like linen, and some materials unlike anything on Earth. She grabs a white hangar that held an almost-knee-length dress on it with flowy long sleeves and a dolman neckline. Its pattern intrigued Penny, a lemon yellow background covered in pink and red flowers. Smiling, she fumbles for the price tag, finding a sticker and pressing it, a holographic coming up with information and a price: it was discounted ten less of the Jalasian currency, which she had no idea what it was in U.S dollars.

“See something you like, Pen?” Clint walks up to her side in curiosity. He’s holding a small box, similar to a ring box. 

Penny blinks. “Oh,” She turns to him. “I don’t think I’ll buy it. It’s not much of a clearance.”

“Well, that’s why they installed a conversion app on their fancy, high-tech phones,” He practically mocks it, despite thinking it was pretty good. Clint opens the app and scans the price tag. “Pen, it’s only a thirty dollar dress and it looks like two hundred. Go ahead and get it.”

Penny bites her lip. She keeps the dress in her hands and goes to a different section, hoping to find something cool to bring home to Ned. Now that was worth spending more than thirty dollars on.

Ten minutes later, Penny nervously walks up to the other three men, her dress in hand as well as a box, the plastic showing a small weapon inside that looked like a mixture of nunchucks and a knife. 

Tony grins. “I see you found yourself something nice. You should make it an outfit, add some shoes and a necklace, or something,” He suggests generously. 

“Oh, that’s okay, Mr. Stark,” She waves off. “I’m good.”

“You sure?” He tries again. “Off-planet excursion and the currency is just above half of ours? I’d say that’s pretty good.”

Penny was about to speak when he adds to it. “Kid, either way, I’m a billionaire and we were also given free money.”

She gave in. The pair of strappy gladiator sandals she found, though, may have been her new favorite pair of shoes.

Walking out of the boutique, a bag in each of their hands, Penny can feel a buzzing in her pocket. She pulls out her phone, reading the text from none other than Galira (this was a disposable Jalasian phone for the stay). 

“Something wrong, Penny?” Rhodey notices merely seconds after she looks at her device. 

Mr. Stark was probably not going to like this. “Um...Galira invited me to a training session?” She states meekly. 

“Training session for what?” Tony’s face scrunches up like a scared and squeezed sponge. 

Penny’s hands fidget around with themselves, her eyes facing the immaculate ground. “Training with her friends on the team.”

There could've been worse things, but this wasn't his favorite. “Well, _do_ you want to?”

She didn’t expect exactly that from Tony. “...Yes.” Desperately, actually. It was kinda why she was there.

Tony bites his lip, and he bites it a little too hard. This was mostly hard to say because, yeah, he was afraid to have her out of his sight (he would need to, right?), but he trusted her and it was merely training. What could go wrong in training? There are no enemies there. Sure, the other kids might have abilities that could kill her, but he’s really trying to suppress those thoughts for the better. “Okay,” He practically grits out like he's been doing ever since he said yes to departing their home planet. 

* * *

The door makes a sleek noise upon opening up. Galira spins around, dressed in an emerald green workout suit that hugged her body, showing a bit of the pudge on her belly. She throws her arms out. “This is  _ our  _ training room!”

Walking through the complex, Penny didn’t think she could be any more impressed, but HA! She was absolutely wrong! The room’s ceilings were at least two times taller than her apartment, mats covered the floor from edge-to-edge, lights were bright, but not murderously so. Some low-volume electronic music plays from the roof speakers and the rest of the team turns to see her, Cikkma waving and Baxdol yells, “Hi!”

“Hi, Baxdol!” Penny greets back, feeling a bit outcasted by her red outfit.

“Who’s doing stretches?” Astoss inquires loudly, arms crossed. 

“I’ve already done them four times this week,” Kindha grumbles. 

“Jesus, I’ll do them, you baby,” Cikkma flicks her finger against his head. “Sit down and let’s start!” She turns her eyes, then, to Penny. “Don’t worry, nothing too strenuous for stretches! Just that, a couple of laps, and then we’ll do an introductory spar for you!”

So far, Cikkma, Galira, and Sovial have definitely made her the most comfortable. Nothing bad to say about everyone else, she just hadn’t talked to them much, yet. “Okay,” She nods, coming with Galira to sit down with them in a circle. 

Stretches came and went, as well as the jogging, something she was used to from the Avenger’s training. But the next thing was entirely different. It was more than just hand-to-hand combat: it was with powers she’s never seen in her life. 

Sovial breathes her final pant and claps her hands together. “Okay!” She yells. “Someone spar to give Penny an idea of what we’re made of!” 

Baxdol immediately walks backward while Kindha steps forward and Astoss announces that she’ll do it. The two step into a red square and a massive holographic wall with statistic recordings such as times and fight patterns shows up. 

“You two ready?” Cikkma checks. 

“Yeah!” They say in sync. 

Sovial taps the timer button. “GO!”

  
  
Astoss ignites her hand in bright white, transforming into ropes and launching them for Kindha’s ankles before he’s even able to respond, slamming him to the ground. 

Cikkma bursts into hysterical laughter, along with everyone else except Penny who’s observing and confused. “That’s the move you’ve been using the past two times, Astoss!” 

“It’s a really fucking good move!” She snaps back before resuming the spar. 

Kindha twists his body to the side to knock Astoss to the ground, pulling a knife from his side-of-the-knee pockets and launching it at her face, but it misses due to the fierce-reflex-ing girl’s grab of it and throws it to the side. Before he tries something new against his opponent, Astoss launches a monstrously hard kick right at his stomach. 

Penny flinches, squeezing her finger against her thumb anxiously. She’d watched the Avengers train, but there was something different about this. More fast-paced? Or was it all just new? Was the shock in what they were doing or was it all an illusion in Penny’s head?

“There’s something special in the armor that defends against blunt-force trauma like that,” Sovial reassures Penny. “We have that, but our enemies don’t. Uffian armor is just bulky, but it riccochets bullets and some other things, so it’s literally the worst.”

Kindha barely takes a moment to recover, especially with Astoss’ smirk. He launches his own energy manipulation at her, colored silver, but is blocked by her own in the form of a wall for a split second before she comes and tackles him. In a huge burst, silver covers their fight cubicle and Astoss is against the opposite wall, Kindha now armed with knives, one of them going for the neck and another to the stomach. Luckily enough, her tumbling skills were good enough that she could pretty much backflip, catch the knives, and return them in a swift, mortifying launch. One hits the wall and falls to the floor, the other is swept to the side and Kindha yells out, going to attack her, using a leg to slam her hip down against the ground. 

Penny can’t help but be uncomfortable. This was incredibly alternative to the way she trained with the Avengers. Was this normal? It couldn’t be, right? It seemed so harsh, somewhat draconian how they fought. However, they faced different challenges than the team did on Earth. These were different people in a different world. Maybe it was really worse. 

Astoss attempts to blind Kindha, snatching one of his knifes from a leg pocket while she was at it, jolting it and stopping in front of his neck since she wasn’t actually going to stab him. Somehow, considering the light, her opponent snatches her wrist in a near bone-breaking grip, thrusting it to the side, and bulldozes his body so that he flips her over onto the ground. A knife he then holds glows, pausing in front of her face. The buzzer rings. It’s done. 

“Goddammit, Kindha,” Astoss groans, but all in good faith. Her opponent just smirks in response while they both pant from the blood-rushing activity. “So, uh, that’s our introduction. Tends to vary from person-to-person, but I’m just a bitch and he’s a bastard, so.”

There’s a feeling inside Penny’s chest that says that absolutely everything was wrong right now, causing her to merely nod and look to the side. The mutters in the group that she just barely heard she couldn’t process the words. 

“Is everything alright, Penny?”

“Hm?” The Terran teen blinks. It was Sovial who had checked with her softly, and it was so authentic that it shook Penny, a bit. She spotted Galira’s attention switching from watching others talk to the two of them as soon as Sovial spoke. “Oh, I’m fine,” She reassures. 

“Do you want to go in the ring?” Before Penny can speak, Galira continues. “I mean alone to activate your powers. You can fight if you want to, later. No obligation to, though,” She smiles. 

The fact that some of the others were watching her made her nervousness worse. “Um...okay.”

Galira seems to light up like a lightbulb. “Great!” She waves for her to come over. The ring walls fall and the two step inside, the wall coming back up. Galira goes to the wall screen and checks the strength, sensitivity, and other settings. “Okay! We’re good to go!” She turns back around and faces Penny. Opening a body-sized gap so she could leave, Galira exits the box and gets to where Penny can see her through the semi-transparent screen wall. “Try...to clear your mind. The hardest part for me when I first activated. I know you’re probably very nervous, so just try to match your head to your heartbeat, if you know what you mean. Willpower, Pen.”

Penny’s hands are by her sides, jewel-like eyes of blue-green covered by her eyelids. Fade away that there are teenagers you don’t know in the room (not to mention that they’re a different species). Fade away that you’re light years away from your aunt, your friends, your home, everything you know except for the Avengers, for Mr. Stark. Fade it away because there’s something inside you that wants to be sparked. 

Sometimes silence is pain, a pleasure, but it was nerve-racking, right now. Seconds pass like minutes, terrified nothing was to come, or that too much would. The anticipation of the equation being completed was half exhilarating and half-mortifying. 

However, the answer was unexpected. 

A blast shakes Penny, the ring, and even the room. Cikkma outside nearly falls over and Baxdol is so startled that he shrieks. While Sovial and Astoss tease him about it, Galira covers her mouth, staring at the Terran.

Penny’s gasping. For a first time using Autralan powers, that was more than she thought it could be. Something has built up inside her, she realizes. Something almost bigger than herself, and terrifyingly so. It feels like a lighting strike was her body, but no pain, only power. This was not like Spider-Girl, how she got her powers when she was thirteen. It was so different, somehow much more innocent than this. She thought her spider-powers were above her. This was worlds more. 

“What the hell?” Sovial gawks. “How did that not break the box?!” She almost yells. 

Penny swallows as everyone outside chatter except for Galira, who stares not with shock like just seconds ago, but wonder with a smirk on her face. 

There’s gotta be more. 

Penny aims her eyes at her palms and inhales sharply. She tries to bring it back and despite more anticipation, it comes back flaring, yet more controlled. It’s amorphous electric-blue energy sitting in her hands, waiting to be used, to be taken advantage of. 

She shoots for the wall. 

Baxdol screeches like a four-year old. 

“YOU DID IT AGAIN YOU FUCKER!” Cikkma chuckles at him, swatting him with her hand. 

She gasps, feeling how her body was a little more shaken than powered, this time. Hearing everyone tell her to try again is the motivating factor that brings Penny to ignite it in her hands, once again, playing with it and growing the energy slowly. It’s so beautiful, and it’s so monstrously strong. It’s an angel and a devil, something like the judge, the jury, and the executioner. All above her. Nothing felt below her in this moment of time. 

“I’m...the deadliest on the team,” Astoss states hesitantly. “I couldn’t even do half of that, the first time.”

“U-uh…” Penny is at a loss for words, especially when Kindha asks if she’s ever used her powers before. “No...Never.”

Sovial checks the settings of the box. “Exert yourself the most you can, but if you want to stop, stop. If you feel like you’re hurting or going to die, stop,” She directs. 

Penny stands tall in the box and here we go again. The light starts in her hands, goes around her hands, it’s swallowing her body whole, flashing, glowing, and growing brighter. A whir develops that normally would concern Penny, but she didn’t hear and she didn’t care. She went blind, but how does she stop? The light reaches her eyes, it’s lifting her hair, she’s a ticking time bomb, or so it feels like. What is she, really? More importantly, what the fuck was in the spider?

Kindha notices the worst-case scenario, or at least one of the worst ones, as did everyone else, and he shouts what everyone is thinking. “THE WALLS ARE CRACKING STOPSTOPSTOP-”

Penny just barely hears him and stops, but not without stumbling backward and sliding down against the wall to sit on the floor, gasping for breath and feeling shock all across her body. 

“Penny!” Galira has already opened the likely-to-crack-open box and runs in, slides into her knees. “You okay-you hurt, you nauseous?”

“I...I…” Penny can’t really speak, not because of how she and her body felt, but she had no idea what to say. “Holy _ fuck _ .”

  
  


Tony is jaw-dropped by the end of the security footage. “Yeah. Holy fuck is right.”

“How…” Steve starts, all of the Avengers in the training room with Penny and the other teens, a half-disturbed-half-amazed Penny sits in the corner calming down on the sofa. “How have you had this the whole time and never realized?”

“I don’t know,” Penny whispers. 

“That’s like Carol-level power, Penny,” Natasha states. “Or at least, it’s similar to her.”

“Yeah,” Clint shakes his head smirking. “No shit.”

“I’ve never seen anyone have two different power sets, though,” Thor comments. “Absolutely no one in the way you do. You’re sticky and you’re glowy. Those are very different.”

“Thank you, captain obvious,” Penny is still only able to whisper. Everything is overwhelming her, and it overwhelms her greatly. Her life is altered forever by what she knows she can do, and what she knows she could. These new powers could change the course of her life, and they technically already have, but there’s so much more. She’s going to train for a week with the other teens and then what? She goes home like nothing ever happened? No. She can lift hundreds and hundreds of pounds, glow brighter than a disco ball, and probably a lot more she hasn’t uncovered. So yes, excuse her if a whisper was not a satisfactory response. What was going to happen to her next?

“Well, she should stay here the next week and learn to control it,” Baxdol suggests, lying down on the floor like the strange person he was, tossing a training ball up and catching it on repeat. “An hour and a half a day will give her a good head start,” He estimates. 

“Something like this could take a full year to get a handle of,” Thor contradicts. 

“Hey, Steve, how long did it take you to stop running into walls?” Tony inquires.

“He still does,” Natasha smirks deviously, leaning against the wall with her hair in a french braid, at the moment, wearing a violet heathered t-shirt with black leggings and some sneakers. 

“It’s been five years, Stove.”

“Knock it off, Tony, be serious, right now,” The captain rolls his eyes. “Is there anything else we know about what she can do that we don’t already know?”

“Typically,” Sovial shifts her weight from one thigh to the other. “Our species can fly and breathe in space. That’s mostly it asides from energy warp. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was more under the covers with her. We think she’s special.”

Special? She’s one of the only super-powered girls on Earth, how more special could she be? Penny drops her head into her laps and groans.

Tony clicks his tongue. “Well, I don’t exactly become a lava lamp when I think about it, so I don’t know how to help. I don’t know the chemistry of her abilities, I don’t know anything about radiation or heat or literally any science or anything practical of how to help her.”

That was so helpful. Not. Penny chews on her lips and can’t tell if she wants to scream or not. 

“She just needs practice!” Galira says as if it’s no big deal, throwing her hands up. “Maybe it’s a glitch.”

“How do you glitch being a god?” Clint’s face scrunches. 

“She’s not a god, but she is powerful,” Kindha corrects cooly.   
  
  
  
“Uh, where I come from, kid, she is god,” Clint fires back. 

Tony presses his fingers against his browbones, for a moment. “Uhh…” He’s clueless as to what to do until he notices Penny with her head in her lap, immediately thinking the worst, scared she was crying and afraid. While everyone else talks or banters, he starts over to the teenage girl, hoping he can help her. “Penny?” He asks softly. 

She jolts her head up in the blink of an eye, not crying, but looking like she may, even with no tears in her eyes. Oh, how this child could show emotion through the lack of typical signs. “Yeah?” Her voice is so quiet. 

Tony decides to sit down by her, leaving reasonable space between them for her comfort. “You okay, honey?” The concern shows vibrantly through his eyes. 

“I’m just fine, Mr. Stark,” She assures. 

“Kid, I know when you are and I know when you aren’t. It’s okay. This is so much to deal with.”

“Why am I more powerful than them?” Penny refers to the rest of the teenagers with so much experience in their abilities, and she has none, but can do so much more. 

Tony sighs. “I dunno, kiddo, I really don’t know. I don’t know why any of this is happening, but you’re gonna be okay. We’re...regrettably staying here for the week.” A week on an alien planet? Oh, what could go wrong? Absolutely everything, if you asked Tony. 

“Not regrettably, this place is so cool,” She lightens up. So far, the food was super tasty, the shopping was somehow cheaper than the U.S dollar for high quality, and the scenery was more breathtaking than anywhere she’s ever been in her life. Why would she want to leave? 

Tony is agreeable. “Yeah, it’s nice. Kinda reminds me of Turks and Caicos, but not so tropical.”

“I actually thought the same thing,” Penny nods. “I’ve seen pictures and it’s comparable here.”

“Except for the blue sand and the double-the-size-Burj-Khalifa, among other things.”

“Oh, yeah. Turks and Caicos thrive off of tourism. You don’t even need to thrive that way, it’s just...perfect here.”

“Well, nowhere is perfect and nowhere is perfectly safe.” The correction was half realism half anxiety, a common contributor to Tony’s answer to things. 

“There’s gotta be somewhere perfectly safe.”

Ah, yes, the words of a young teenager, or at least in his eyes. “Pen, if I knew the best place that was perfectly safe, you would be one of the first people I would tell.”

“That’s nice,” She weakly smiles. Her expression, however, then morphs to something a bit sadder. 

Tony is quick to frown. “Is something wrong?”

“No, no I’m good.”

“Liar. Talking is better for you than bottling it all up.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“No you’re not.”

“Am I ever?”

“You have no reason to quadruple-guess everything like I do, you only need to second-guess.”

Penny playfully squints her eyes. “Words of wisdom, Mr. Stark?”

“Words of absolute brilliance,” He jokes in return with exaggeration that some may find agonizing. 

Penny snorts. “Everything is fine,” She assures, once again, despite not everything being fine. Four words: super fucking powerful powers. What else is there to say? Is it actually comparable to Carol, who she would love to see when she came by, next month. 

“So you’ll train with us daily the whole week, Penny?” Astoss calls, arms crossed, but not angrily. She seems to have lightened up a good bit. 

Initially, Penny shifts her eyes to Tony for permission and he nods. “Um,” She sees the group waiting for her response. “Yeah. I’d love to.”

Penny couldn’t help but notice the particular glow of Galira’s smile when she said that. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will be edited tomorrow or the day after! I've only worked through chapter four or halfway through five! Thank you so so much for the support I've already gotten through kudos, comments, and bookmarks! :D


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Galira welcomes Penny into her home, Tony vocalizes his concerns to Pepper, and Natasha is approached by a government official. How nice. : )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i posted this a little later than i preferred but oh well. Fifth chapter is in progress and is going smoothly. I'm gonna take a lot longer on it just because i haven't been writing much and this was wrote weeks ago pre-editing. Hope you guys enjoy! thank you so much for your support!

By the time tomorrow comes around, Galira invites Penny to meet her family, and she can’t think of a reason in the world to say no. 

It’s the second time Penny rides on the oddly nice public transport, no more or less impressed than before. Galira informs her that due to the manageable Jalasian population of just one-hundred-ninety thousand people, government funds could afford the luxuries of a thriving public education system and such things, while the yearly (not to mention petite) batch of immigrants from a variety of planets helps lower the taxes. So far, Penny couldn’t see much wrong with Jalasia. Their neighbors, however, she had not heard too well about them.

The neighborhood Galira Gahn’s family lives in was purely middle class, or at least according to Galira. In comparison to her Queens apartment, this was luxurious. Lovely houses make up the Orea Ridge community, gated and in a secluded suburb outside of Siadra called Tuma. The houses weren’t quite mansions, but they were a generally spacious (her apartment was seven hundred square feet) two or three thousand square feet with lush green lawns and the cutest patios Penny had ever seen. The Gahn household sits on Seawood lane’s cul-de-sac peacefully, a Jalasian flag sticks in the immaculate lawn and there’s a unique magenta wreath on the front double doors. This was, without a doubt, one of the nicest places she’d ever been that wasn’t the compound, the tower, or Liz’s house. 

They had walked since the transport can drop them off right outside the community gate, the sun shining over their mini trek. There’s a homey feel when Penny observes this house’s exterior. A towering tree with a white trunk and long, whispy red leaves (like a willow tree’s long lost cousin) attracts Penny’s eyes. It may have been behind the house, but when they were about to go through the side door, she noticed and couldn’t help but be in awe. What else was in their back yard?

“Mom? Ikali? I’m home!” Galira calls upon entering. She drops her satchel purse in the unorganized drop-zone area, bags and papers scattered around. The air is generally cool, a smell of eucalyptus and lavender travels up Penny’s nose. As they head down the short hallway, it’s a familiar feeling, just like when May cooks something she found on a recipe blog for dinner, and that was actually what was happening. On their left is the kitchen, somewhat like an American one, but not quite with the teal-gold marble-like countertops, and the appliances were bigger and more modern-looking with less details and more simplicity. The “refrigerator” had a clear door, all of its products you could see clearly.

Penny had seen the woman who was standing in front of the massive kitchen island chopping a foreign vegetable before coming here, the woman having been a mother desperate to see her daughter in the palace. Something she didn’t do in the palace, though, was slice-and-dice the vegetable as fast as she was...How was it possible to slice that fast? 

“Hi, Mom!” Galira grins. Her eyes go back to Penny, as if queuing her to enter a movie frame. 

It was perfect timing because the tall, rounded woman is done chopping just as her daughter finishes her sentence. The color of gold is the woman’s irises, shimmery lip gloss on her lips. “Hey, sweetheart,” she gives her daughter a quick hug before looking at the stranger in her home. “You’re Penny Parker, right? From Terra?”

Penny simply nods, prepping her manners. “Yes, ma’am, I am.” Aunt May did not raise her niece (pretty much daughter) to be rude. 

=

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, sweetie. You can call me Cordina, Miss Gahn, whatever you like, it doesn’t matter. My home, while you’re here, is yours, so make yourself at home.” She dumps the vegetables into a pot of boiling water. “I’m making lunch and it should be ready in half an hour. I’m happy to give you a bowl, but you’re not obligated to, or I can make you something you like. If you don’t like it, that’s okay, this is the healthiest meal of the week and I’ve never made it before,” Cordina finishes with a laugh. “Galira, you should show her the yard-you always spend time in the yard, anyways!” She gestures to the slide doors and the scenery on the other side. 

“That was the plan. Shall we?” Galira starts towards the slide doors. “I bet Ikali is on the trampoline. Is Dad still at work?” She pulls it open, letting the Jalasian air inside. 

“Dad will be home in an hour. He supposedly has a long meeting and all sorts of difficulties,” Cordina answers smoothly, shaking her head at the last sentence. “What we do for money.”

Penny finally gets a full-blown view of the tree she saw from the driveway. It was glorious, even though it wasn’t that tall, probably twenty feet. The long wisps of red created its own semi-see-through cove inside. She steps onto the patio, a swinging bench hangs with a fireplace off to the side, a pair of shoes beside it. Beyond the concrete is soft-looking green grass that’s well-trimmed, and after the huge patch of grass was the natural Chamanoan ground, lasting forever like the sky seemed to with it. 

“I…” Penny felt speechless, but not quite. There was a sound that was very minor, but it was a little girl’s giggle-scream, and then came chirping of birds (or whatever wild creatures inhabited the planet). “I can see why you’re out here, so much.”

“Oh yeah. I have a hammock up inside the tree-three, actually! My little sister has one, and then there’s one my dad usually uses, so that’s where you can lie.” She turns her attention to the far left. “Ikali, you weirdo, come meet the most powerful girl in the world!”

Penny was taken back by that, the words repeating over and over in her head. “I...I’m not-”

A trampoline, similar to one from home, but a little more technologized, sits fifty feet away, and a petite child’s body emerges from its entrance. She hops onto the ground, running through the couple-inch-tall grass, passing a collection of planted flowers in an arrangement of wild colors and patterns. Ikali, with rampant, fluffy curls of gold and red and butterscotch-like skin, not to mention eyes of emeralds, stops right in front of her with a smile of champions, the facade of innocence (most likely not just a facade with the glint of her orbs) glows through the child. Like a child, she only says one word: “HI!”

“...H-hi, Ikali, is it?” Penny checks. 

“Uh-huh!” Her voice was high-pitched, but not in an irritating way. It sounded as if she’d never faced a problem in her whole life. “And you’re-” Ikali decides to start jumping up and down because she could and she was pretty much addicted to the trampoline, “The! Most! Powerful! Girl! In! The! World!” She quotes verbatim. 

How was she supposed to respond to that? Penny was inexperienced with children, having babysat only twice in her life, not exactly easy to do when they didn’t have many family friends and May wasn’t comfortable with just letting her put out an ad on Care.com in a city like New York, a neighborhood like Queens. But that couldn’t be true. She wasn’t the most powerful girl on Chamano, and not the most powerful girl in the galaxy. Galira wasn’t dumb, but people like Carol and Thor and gods and demons she’d never even heard of were the supreme power of the universe. Of trillions and trillions she’d never know, she was not consequential to them. Others were. 

Galira fidgets with her hands, even with her posture standing tall with a comfortable smile. “Well, at least  _ I  _ think so. There’s a lot we haven’t seen yet and a lot yet to come.”

She’s in a strange state of “what?” and “um…”, or at least that was the best way Penny could describe it. First of all, this was the cutest little kid she had ever seen in her whole life. Second, Galira’s confidence in her was stunning every time. Why? Why should she have such confidence in her?

“Perhaps we should practice.”

“Hm?” Those words lure Penny out of her short trance. “Um...How would we do that?”

Galira smirks, walking backward twenty feet away. Quickly like its no problem in the world, she is enveloped by golden light, traveling and twirling around her. Her arms are extended to the open air, streams of dense light developing. “Just block it.”

Penny just blinks at first before processing her words and before she knew it, a table-sized shield of blue stood tall in front of her, yellow attempting to break through on the other side fatally. 

“Woahhhhhhh!” Ikali covers her mouth with her toddler-sized hands, a child in amazement and wonder standing to the side watching a new friend dodge her big sister’s power. 

A shaky breath can’t help but fall out of Penny’s mouth. It was effortless, and Galira was fighting it on the other side. “Geez. You’re putting up a storm without breaking a sweat,” The girl laughs on the other side. 

The two dissipate their light and finally, she lets herself loose to the curiosity. Penny aims her hand to the sky and shoots, the glow shooting like a laser at the speed of, well, light. There’s then another, but this time, it crashes at the distant ground, leaving a harsh mark in the rocky blue ground about a mile away. She didn’t mean to hit it that far. 

Galira crosses her arms and puts weight into her right thigh. “Try to aim a little closer. Afterward, you should try to manipulate it into shapes or objects, like a dagger. When properly tamed, the light can give effects like an object you think of.”

Penny’s eyes grow like she’s seen a ghost. “Seriously?” She practically gawks. Her eyes fade away to another area before blasting ground merely five feet away. Galira’s order is followed, Penny thinks of a dagger she’d seen last week while on Tumblr and it’s a light version, some of the details of the quilted handle and the inscription of the blade still intact. There’s only a few seconds before she throws it to the side, not realizing it was going to Galira. The other girl was simply planning to dissipate it with her own abilities, but Penny somehow beats her to it, despite the distance between them. 

“Wow!” Ikali exclaims excitedly. “I can’t wait to activate mine when I turn ten! I have to wait so long!” She finishes in a short-lived pout. “I don’t know what color it’ll be, but I want it to be green. I’ll be mad if it’s black. Black is boring and the color of death...like Baxdol.”

Penny starts snickering and Galira tries to contain hers. “I-Ikali...You,” She slaps a hand over her mouth and mutters an, “Oh my God,” before trying to correct her sibling. “You can’t...call people the color of death.”

The little girl tilts her head. “Then why do you call Astoss a snitch face?”

“I-Ikali, I do not call her a…” Galira is about to say that she doesn’t call her that when she remembers that it wasn’t a snitch face, but a bitch face. Was it serious? No. That's just the way they thought of each other. Astoss was a bitch face and she was a cunt waffle. She huffs out a sigh. “I didn’t call her anything.”

Penny bit her lip. She probably did, but she intended to act in her friend’s favor. 

The little girl just hums. “Sure, Galira. Sure,” She smirks sarcastically, but then moves on to a new subject because it wasn’t worth  _ all _ of her time. Plop! Her body drops to the ground and she’s sitting in Indian pose. “You know where I wanna go?”

“Where do you wanna go, cutie?” Galira kneels on the ground a few feet away from her younger sister, grass not too rough against her skin. Penny follows, feeling that it’d be weird if she was still standing, so she sits with her knees pulled to her chest. 

“I wanna go to the beach!” Ikali declares, grinning from ear to ear. “And do you know  _ why  _ I want to go to the beach?”

Galira looks over to Penny, hoping she may show some supportive interaction. Since she didn’t feel like she was doing much, the Terran teen quickly picked up on it. “Why do you wanna go?”

“Because my SISTER-”

Penny’s hand jolts a bit due to the sudden volume change. She should’ve expected it. Children are randomer than your chances of being stranded on an island. 

“Is going to the beach tomorrow with her friends!”

“Well, I’m sure my friends would love to have you.” Galira turns her attention to her guest and friend. “This little thing loves to go almost wherever my friends and I go. It’s like she has an additional five siblings.”

“Ah, okay,” Penny nods. Her forehead feels a little bit cooler than before, the vibe of a softer summer around her. The air is so fresh, unlike New York. 

Ikali eyes the blonde. “You’re coming with us!”

She blinks, first, and receives that Galira’s looking at her with a face that says “say yes,” urgently. Penny tries to grin in a sweet, child-friendly way, though it being something she wasn’t exactly an expert at. “I’d love to.”

Ikali’s grin is one of pure sunlight.

* * *

In the massive penthouse suite lent to Tony for the week-long stay, he too grins. “Hey, Pep.”

On his screen was the one and only Pepper Potts, his soon-to-be-wife, and the jewel of his eye. Her hair hangs down in silky locks of red-blonde, her face is without makeup, crystal blue orbs have no eyeliner or mascara or eyeshadow on the smooth lids. “Hey...How’s Chamano? Did I mis-pronounce it?”

“No, you’re good. Uh…” Tony doesn’t know where to start, so he fumbles with his fingers a bit as he sits on the enormous bed, double the size of a king bed at home and even a little bit more comfortable (actually, a lot more, can he buy one?) “Small...but big.”

Pepper stares at him, almost as if she was disappointed, but she wasn’t. “That might just be the vaguest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Yeah, he wasn’t very good with words as much as he could’ve been. “There’s such a small population here, it’s not even funny. They have this gigantic palace taller than the Burj Khalifa and feels like the size of multiple football fields, but it’s probably two million square feet or something crazy.” Little did he know it was actually more than twenty million, but they weren’t gonna talk about that. “Nice aliens. Stuff’s really cheap here-”

She puts a stop to the ranting. “What about the team?”

“They’re having fun. Or at least I guess they are. Clint says that’s the best sleep he’s ever had-you think we can  _ buy _ the beds here-”

“What about Penny?”

He is quick to pause in the darkness of the room (the curtains were closed and he had no idea why). His neck is tense from his bad posture (that was one thing Pepper suggested he works on but he’s not perfect). Tony rubs a hand on the side of his neck. “Uhhhhhhhhh...She loves it here. She loves it too much.”

Pepper tilts her head a bit to her right. “How come?”

“Oh, well you know me, anxiety-filled Tony about to have a heart attack every time Penny does something remotely dangerous.”

“As accurate as that is, you’re not allowed to have a heart attack.”

“Aw, man, there goes tomorrow’s plans,” He murmurs sarcastically. Tony’s eyes shift off to the right where blackout curtains hanging from the thirty-foot-tall ceiling. “Penny’s a kid in a candy shop, and I get that, but we don’t  _ know _ this place.”

“Well, that’s part of why you’re there besides everything else.”

“I...Space is dangerous.”

“Yeah.”

“I nearly died in space.”

“I know you did. One of the worst days of my life.”

He didn’t want to imagine it. Not falling from the stars that were the last thing he thought he’d see. Not the destruction of New York as he woke up. Not the tears from the love of his life’s beautiful face. None of it. All he wanted to see was her. All he wanted to see was home....with the addition of Penny not being indoctrinated into an alien culture. Did they worship anything here?

“But one of the best days of my life is when I get to hear you say, ‘I do.’ That’s coming up. So the sooner we get home, the sooner we can finally plan where we want it.”

“Honey, I thought you chose off the list?” Tony asks. For as long as they’d been thinking about it, they still have not booked or at least inquired on locations, yet. They’d looked in-country, out-of-country, big places, small places, fancier places, and simpler places. 

Pepper shifts her legs, displaying them as freshly shaven and moisturized out from under her gray silk robe. “It’s thirty venues long and it is  _ our _ wedding, so I wanted to make sure we both had a say in it. Most couples, like, do that.”

Tony catches sight of her long legs and he chews a bit of his cheek. “Well we had France, for once-”

“I thought you weren’t interested in that French chateau,” Pepper looks at him with confused, squinted eyes. Granted, when they went on the website, he was easily distractible and probably not going to like it anyways, but he said there was no problem in writing it down, anyways. 

“I did!” Tony is quick to claim. He stuck by the quote that if you didn’t remember something, it probably wasn’t important, and he was sad to say that the French venue was nowhere in his memory. 

“It’s an hour from Paris and it’s particularly a venue site and a hotel.”

Tony hums, snatching a pillow, flopping onto his belly, and resting his chin on the fluffy cylinder. He doesn’t spot it. “You wearing the matching piece?”

Pepper rolls her eyes. She unties the saggy bow of her robe and lets the drapes open up, revealing a matching chemise, barely a few inches down her thighs with spaghetti straps. 

“It looks great. You wanna wear that on our wedding night?” He smirks. 

“I’ll be wearing something  _ very _ different on our wedding night, Tony,” Her voice is a little too silky to be rated G. “But we have to plan it first.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Now I feel like a pervert.” Tony rolls over onto his back and positions the screen so it’s floating still in the thin air above him, his eyes going back up to look at her, the robe now tied up tighter than before. “That venue had a lot of capacity, right? Not that we need it, but bigger is better than smaller.”

“We’re only having twenty people, but yes, I agree. The smallest venue, I think,” Pepper tries to remember for a solid five seconds. “...Is in Montana…”

“Where?” A look of disappointment met his brown eyes. “Oh...Sorry, I forget that it exists. Where exactly in Montana, of all places?”

“There's a place in Big Sky. It wasn’t exactly a top contender, but it was still beautiful and I thought maybe the press would freak out less if we went somewhere more secluded.”

“You do have a point.” Tony doesn’t realize it, but he has a soft smile etched into his face. He can’t help what comes natural to him. The proof of love, right? 

“As for other places in Europe, there is a ski resort in Zermatt, Switzerland-”

“Okay.” That was probably the most expensive destination on the list if they didn’t have the Maldives. (Was he interested in the Maldives? Not really. Switzerland? He guessed.)

“I mentioned the French chateau in Tours.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Last, but not least, I found a gigantic villa in Tuscany.”

That sounded like the most attractive option. “My mom was Italian. She said it was one of the best places in the world.” Through his brown orbs, you see memory like he does. They went, once, when he was a child. It was a home from his mother’s family where they stayed. Granted, his father didn’t like it, but he remembered how doted on he was by his mom and his family. He remembers laughter and joy, playing with some local kids that came to the house. There was a big pool and towering green topiaries surrounding the hilly property. He saw it all. It was all probably gone, now, or the people were. The grandmother, Mia, probably passed a long time ago. His aunt must have been her age, now. 

“And there was a quiet resort in the middle of Oregon that would’ve been nice, then we could fly somewhere tropical for the honeymoon if you want, or we’d stay there...Tony?”

He blinks. “I’m sorry?”

“You zoned out,” Pepper frowns. “What’s wrong?” She voices concern. 

“Oh, nothing, angel. A resort in Oregon? What, we gonna get married around all the pot smokers?” He jokes lamely. 

“It’s in the middle of nowhere. California and New York has pot smokers, too. And worse.”

Ouch. He doesn’t think. “...Are you able to show me the list?”

Pepper flips up her hand, holding the notebook. The screen takes a picture and sends it to the side, splitting the screen between his gorgeous wife and a piece of paper with names of places. “I didn’t realize we had that many.”

“You said yes to twenty out of thirty.”

“It felt like twenty out of eighty, but okay.”

Tony’s eyes catch New Zealand, Bora Bora, Monterey, Carmel Valley, Jackson Hole, and a secluded vacation rental in Colorado, as well. Many options and only one to choose. His mind runs into a big, whole blank. 

Pepper knows her fiance well enough to see when he is just not with it. “It’s okay, Tony, I know you can’t focus, right now. Don’t worry, I didn’t expect us to do everything in one night. You’re stressed out enough, already.”

Tony sighs. “What do I do?” He blurts. 

Pepper’s body relaxes, tension sinking out of her shoulders, unlike her husband-to-be. “What do you mean, honey?” She inquires softly. 

“...I don’t think she’s going to want to come home when it’s time to leave, Pepper...She’s so,” His voice escalates a notch, “... _ Young _ ...and bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, ready to take on the whole entire world.” In his voice is pain. A soft, protective pain. 

“Gee, I wonder who that sounds like from eight sunny years ago?” Pepper smirks, remembering Tony’s soft, shaggy hair, the different way he dressed, not to mention the destroyed Malibu mansion and how back then, he did not carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. Loved, yet not, and now it is the same in a whole different way. 

Tony squints his eyes at her and scrunches his nose a little in a child-like way and his fiance just giggles. When his safe loosens, it fades into nostalgia, as well as thought. “Penny was just a toddler when I recklessly said that I was Iron Man…”

Pepper’s heart flutters. That was something a mother or father did, reminiscing about their child’s youth. 

He spots the face. “What?”

Pepper shakes her head slowly. “It’s sweet to see how much you care about her.”

“Yeah, Pep, of course that’s what a-” He loses all idea of what to say after, “...mentor...does.”

She brings a loose fist to her mouth and hacks out a purposely fake cough, another, a word, and another pair. 

Tony stares at her. “...Huh?”

Pepper swore for as intelligent as he was, Tony Stark was a complete dumbass. “You’re like her father, Tony.”

Flabbergasted, he rolls over and goes back to the position he was in before. “What? No I’m not.”

“You know she doesn’t have a dad or an uncle anymore. She has her aunt, who’s like her mom. But then you came into her life and changed it forever. I’ve seen how you are around her. The whole team has, too.”

“Honey, she’s not my daughter.”

“To put it bluntly, sometimes blood doesn’t mean shit.”

A snort erupts. 

“I’m serious, Tony. You’re always there for her no matter what. Besides being on the team, she’s not just someone you work with. She’s an absolute _ joy _ to have around.”

He’s smiling, not that he’d notice. Tony is about to speak when his fiance continues, and he doesn’t dare to interrupt her. 

“Steve and Thor and Clint are like her close uncles, Natasha is like her aunt, Sam and Bucky and Wanda are like her fun cousins. You’re the dad in the group.”

“You sure I’m not the uncle-”

Pepper’s voice loses volume and gains weight. “ _Tony_.”

He is without words since he can’t come up with anything good. Tension has risen in his body, clenched jaw and shoulders closer to his ears than before. To the most trustworthy eyes he knows, all that comes out, finally, is, “I don’t know how to keep her safe.”

Her fiance’s pain was like a needle stab, but worse. “Hey...Look at me?”

Tony’s orbs that had drifted off to the side come back to her slowly. 

“It’s not only you that worries. You’re a team and you all have Penny at the top of your priority list. You’re never alone and she’ll never be without someone to keep her safe and to guide her home,” Pepper’s voice is a petal-soft reassurance. The one Tony needed. 

He sighs. “I guess you’re right...But you’re good at that, you know? Being right?”

“It’s just something we have in common, Tony.”

Tony pauses for a moment, adoration radiating from him. “Do you know how much I love you?”

“I hope a lot, considering we are getting married,” Pepper smiles. “I love you too, Tony.”

He swears he could stare at her forever. 

* * *

Natasha Romanoff was knowledgeable. She knew many things, whether you liked it or not. If she didn’t know something, she’d find it out. That was the current course of action for everything about this planet, so far. 

The system here was individual just as most were. A president, his advisors, teenage warriors were just a few things apart of it. There was a vice president, a cabinet equivalent, guards, palace workers, and a senate equivalent. They had no congress. Law proposals come from the executive office and the elected officials approve or decline by vote. It was different, but it could be worse. It could be more dictator-like. 

Of three-hundred-eighty stories, she was on the two-hundred-ninetieth. This was where cabinet members seemed to spend most of their time. Natasha tried to blend in. It wasn’t completely fool-proof, but it was working out better than Thor going around with his hammer talking loudly with someone. Clint, meanwhile, was as high as he could go on the building. She was hoping that, for his sake, he was not outside the building, but she couldn’t stop him. A bird had to do what a bird had to do. Yes, she was thinking of what Penny said. No, she didn’t steal the sentence...right?

She stands quietly by the atrium balcony, light still shining in from above and from a window you could see in a conference room. There was music, but it couldn’t boom due to the monstrous size of the space. It just kinda echoed, pairing nicely with the coolness of the place. You’d think that hot air would rise enough, but they had good air conditioning. 

“It’s interesting, right?”

Natasha didn’t bat a lash or move, still leaning against the rim. “What is?” She answers the male voice. 

“The holocora,” He refers to the blue cylinder screen that hovered in thin air in the atrium, spanning stories and stories down, its height reaching the three-hundred-fortieth floor. There was information, news, weather, and many other things on it as it spun slowly in a circle for all to see. “You don’t have those on Terra.” 

“We could, but we like to spend time and money on other things.”

“Like what?” 

“The United States of America spends over six hundred billion dollars on military per year. The French government spent seventy two billion dollars on education. Australia spent one hundred fifty three billion dollars on welfare.”

“Well, what about the people? Not the government.”

Natasha shifts weight from one leg to the other. “If you’re like my dumbass boyfriend, you’ll spend a hundred dollars on a drone from Amazon and the next day he’ll have ordered a Japanese snack box subscription and, supposedly, the teenager recommended it, but he finds stuff like that on his own.”

The man who’s approached her laughs in entertainment. “He sounds like a lucky man to be with a woman as intelligent and beautiful as you.”

Depending on the person, remarks like that would sometimes not be her favorite and sometimes, she didn’t care. She turns from facing the atrium to face the being on her left. He was definitely taller than her, maybe six feet tall. Not particularly handsome, yet not particularly ugly. Milk chocolate hair and icicle-colored eyes met hers. His facial hair was not too thick and well-trimmed. 

“I’m Shonis Qallit, but I usually just go by Qallit. Shonis is a repulsive name, not to offend my mother’s will, but that’s the truth. I serve in President Naka’s cabinet,” He explains smoothly. 

“Natasha Romanoff,” She introduces simply with a courteous smile in greeting. “What exactly do you do in the cabinet?”

“I oversee foreign affairs both planetary and interplanetary.”

“Ah. Painful job, I assume from all I’ve learned about the planet.”

“Yes, incredibly,” Qallit shakes his head. “You learn quite fast. As of lately, the Nova Corp has been shoving themselves down our throats. Naka doesn’t mind, too much. I’m not as agreeable.”

Natasha frowns and her brows knit in confusion. “How come?”

Qallit huffs. “They feel they need us to have more collaboration and communications with them, but I think we are just fine as a more stand-alone planet in the union. It’s worked well that way since the dawn of our time. Why change now?”

“Things change such as your economy, your environment, and your fellow planets. Priorities change with them. When one thing becomes different, you must counteract,” Natasha voices. 

The Jalasian man chews his lip. “Not always. Some things don’t change. You don’t have to be the changed.”

“Perhaps not,” She mildly agrees. 

“But...In different ways, you are right. You make changes based off of others.” He knows that he has and that he desires to. 

“Or you adapt?”

“Or you adapt. Some things, however, you can’t adapt to. War. Famine...Corruption.”

Natasha hums, sounding unimpressed. “People do all the time. Planets and countries can fight for decades and centuries. Some things last forever without change.”

“See, things like that, I can’t stand,” Qallit shakes his head vehemently. “I am unable to live with what could be changed going unchanged. I think it’s why I’m good at my job.”

A quietness ensues, all while Natasha studies him up and down, noticing his sudden lack of eye contact. What a good time for Clint to start speaking into her ear through her earpiece. “Duty calls.”

“For all of us, it eventually does. Have a good night, Miss Romanoff.”

“You, too,” She responds quietly. The woman starts the other way to find the elevator, all while her friendly disposition has faded to something darker than neutral, or at least until Clint started talking and she bit her lip to prevent a laugh. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carol Danvers makes her first appearance, she and Tony talking at dawn. Penny goes to the beach with the other kids, Ned not included, who she finally talks to at the end of the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as you can see, im absolutely terrific at updates. NOT. I know this shouldve come by in literal DECEMBER but now it's here. Busy last few months oop. I hope you all enjoy it! THank you for reading and or returning TO read more, even though it's been such a long time.

Carol Danvers takes a sip of her drink. “How are you feeling?”

“What do you mean, ‘how am I feeling?” Tony asks for clarification with half-squinted eyes. 

“Am I the only one who remembers you have a fear of space and high blood pressure triggered by stress?” The woman raises her brows quizzingly. 

“No, I just try not to think about it for sanity’s sake.”

She had arrived late at night, yesterday, to everyone’s surprise. It turns out that the Jalasian government enlisted her to help the hunt for any remnants of their DNA and where their tracking devices had gone out to, but she hasn’t found anything. However, she had reason to stay. The government mentioned foreign tension, among other things, so she agreed to stay for another five days. Her real motive, though, was socialization. It got quite lonely flying through space alone, sometimes, and she had made friends with the team. 

Something Tony and Carol had in common that was almost part of tying their friendship together was that, sometimes, they just could not sleep. Whether it was thoughts about Pepper and Maria or the next apocalypse, sometimes they needed a friend to talk to until they got tired. Besides late-night or early-morning (such as now right before the sun rises), they practically bounced off each other with sarcasm, sass, and their quirky vibes. A dynamic duo that could light up the room. 

“What have you been up to for the past month?” Tony sits under a giant blanket, as does Carol with her own, because they were both babies about the cold in the morning. Don’t even mention her unicorn socks and dragon slippers ; it’s a strange story for another time. 

“Same old thing. Government paid me to look around, I found nothing, and I did check-ups for other planets on the way. Check here, check there, fight this, fight that. You’re a hero, thanks so much, if we have it, here’s a big deposit of credits.”

“Sounds nice,” Tony shrugs. 

“I don’t do it for money. But sometimes, I appreciate having credits to go get some Yataran mulf.” Before her friend could ask, she clarifies, “Alcohol like beer, but better. They flavor it really well.”

“Oh.”

Carol sighs. “It’s some life. These, however, are the moments I live for when I’m not saving a child from a rogue alien monster or assisting a civil war.”

“I can imagine,” Tony nods supportively. “Have you talked to Maria?”

The question feels like a needle out of nowhere. A painfully sharp needle. “...No,” She responds quietly. “I haven’t.”

Tony sees that he hit a mark and retreats, but she’s already hooked on the subject. “Or Monica. God, she’s all grown up. I missed her childhood. Besides her mom, I was all she had.” Her voice is filled with a sense of mourning, mourning dead and lost time, but it isn’t quite regret. 

“I think she understands.”

“Maybe. Maybe Maria does, too, but it doesn’t change what happened. At least she married Rick. It’s healthy for her to move on.”

“I can see you haven’t,” Tony points out. 

“It’s the con about these talks: it gives me space to think...It’s all like Steve.”

Tony readjusts his position in the chair. His lips are dry and his ears are cold. God, he wishes he had earmuffs. “How is it like Steve?”

“We got powers, we never age, we never grow old with the ones we love,” she explains simply. “Peggy’s passed away, and Maria will, one day, too die.”

“There’s still time, Carol,” he tries to reassure. “You just have to choose how to spend it.”

She swallows. “Yeah. But then I get caught all up in,” Carol waves her hands around in a gesturing manner. “ _ Everything _ .”

“Same here. That’s how I have faced my crippling anxiety to support a teenage girl who can lift I don’t even know how many tons and now is an alien being.”

Carol softly chuckles. “I can see that. So far, so good, Tony.”

Tony throws his hands up in a “welp” way. “I try.”

Carol hums and then a pause comes between them, for a good solid minute. It’s still brisk air all around them under cloudless skies. “...Why did we choose to sit outside on the balcony?”

“I have no idea,” Tony replies cluelessly, hands tucked underneath his thighs for warmth. 

“We could be sitting inside watching the news snuggled up. Instead, we’re freezing idiots wrapped up in expensive blankets on a balcony.”

“Well, supposedly, the sunri-oh, there we go.” 

Finally, the sun has come out from under the horizon, lighting up the world where they sit, bringing out the color in their eyes and the highlights of their hair. It blankets the land generously with vibrancy and light, hues of coral, fire red, orange, and gold yellow everywhere. It’s dawn of the next Chamanoan day, and it will end, then it will start again. A cycle to never cease. 

“That’s why we’re out here,” Carol smiles. “‘Cause we complain about dumb stuff, tolerate it, and then we reap our rewards of fresh sunshine.”

“Oh yeah,” Tony wraps his blanket around him tighter and merely wishes his toes could get warmer. His nose, meanwhile, is pink as a pig's. He thought his hair was nice and thick (he liked taking care of his hair), but even his scalp felt oddly chilly. “We really are good at complaining about dumb stuff.”

Carol just shakes her head and laughs with him, for a lengthy moment in time. “These pow-wows and strange talks of ours are incredibly beneficial.”

“Incredibly.”

* * *

Two hours after taking Penny shopping for a swimsuit, the girls in the terrorist task force team plus Penny walk from the city to the beach ; an oddly easy stroll that takes a very scenic twenty minutes. 

She’s in awe of this place. It’s just not a New York kind of city. New York City is aged, choking, tiring, and dirty, or at least for the commoner, it is. Siadra is fresh, vibrant and not so weighed down. It seems like wealth is everywhere, unlike New York where money is for the few and the corporations. It bustles with a glowing health, nothing seems unsafe except incredibly obvious things like what if you fell off a building or shot yourself in the foot. These buildings are taller than New York ; taller than she ever thought possible. So tall, she was an ant on an everlasting field. A field with other (cooler) ants getting close to the ocean. 

Eventually, Penny sees it. They take a turn and the buildings end merely feet away, the sky fully clear of obstacles and is only a familiar shade of blue. She can even start to smell it, this strangely mild, yet cool scent of sea salt and driftwood. The waves come and go away over and over as she nears, a relaxing cycle that’s dreamy music to her ears. Are there many people on the sands of the Jalasian continent? She finds out minutes later, reaching the short fence, damp with ocean air. 

“Ugh, I love the beach!” Cikkma declares. She pulls off her linen caftan to reveal her fire red one-piece. It was simplistic, but with a low back and the fabric was ruched over her belly, and it offered merely a racy v-neck. She abandons her flip flops and puts them into the cubby lockers. “The boys must be really slow.”

“Slow enough to see that you’re wearing my favorite swi-”

Cikkma shudders intensely before swatting his elbow. “I think you have done that five times this week,” she scolds, turning around, but then comes the smile. “You’re such a dumbass.”

“Love you too.” Kindha presses a short, but sweet kiss to her lips. 

There is a tiny, unnoticable-by-her gap between Penny’s lips. She hadn’t realized they were dating. An obnoxious smack of warmth is felt on her body. It was so adorable. Not the feeling, but them. Penny had never thought of it before since her mind was preoccupied with other things, but now that she’s seen it, it functioned and flowed so well, or at least the idea of them. Who else had a significant other before she’s even felt comfortable driving on an interstate, let alone have a boyfriend or girlfriend?

It happens in the blink of an eye like many things do. It takes a moment for her to realize what she’s really doing. They all play on the beach, two of the guys swinging little Ikali side to side like a hammock while she and the other girls are tossing this gigantic blow-up-ball (harshly) between them. This kind of fun she hasn’t had for a long while. It’s not something she, Ned, and MJ have ever done. They’ve been to the beach merely a couple times in their lives, Penny maybe four. They didn’t find much purpose in heading to the beaches of Long Island. It wasn’t a tropical beach or even something like Nantucket. It was just plain. This was worlds (literally) away from the beaches of the northeast United States. 

When was the last time she played volleyball? She didn’t know, remember, or care. Why was she passing like it was a volleyball, some rusty, proper posture to go with it? Not even Penny knows. 

“That’s an interesting move,” Galira smirks. 

“Oh.” It’s nearly disturbing how round, yet small, her lips form a gap. The ball falls to the ground since Astoss’s attention is drawn away, as are the others. “I-uh, it’s a Terran game. You don’t play it with a ball like this, but one that’s smaller and, uh, heavier. I played a little bit when I was younger, but I don’t play super well, or anything,” Penny explains. 

The so-called golden girl finds it funny how there’s a creeping up of pinks on her cheeks, making it evident that she wasn’t wearing foundation like usual. “Teach me-well, us,” The girl corrects. “What was that posture?” She teases. It had looked quite silly to her, so she mocks it, sticking her bottom out and Baxdol snickers in the background feet away from the brown-skinned teen. 

“My posture was terrible because I haven’t played this game in a long time, Gal.” Penny lowers herself into a proper volleyball player’s position, legs down so she’s shortened, but not overly-bent. Her arms, meanwhile, show off her inner fore-arms and inner wrists, and she’s careful to not tuck her thumbs in. Shoulders over knees, she must remember. “You just, uh,” The girl begins to demonstrate once a more suitable object is tossed into the air. She passes it up into the air, Sovial catching it with her hands. “Pass it like that. Or you can set it, but I won’t get into that.”

Galira clicks her tongue. It looks simple, and not as stupid the second time her counterpart does it. She copies the position disturbingly well and does the exact same thing Penny does, and she does it towards her. 

When the ball hits Penny and she passes it back, a grin erupts. “That’s pretty good! Almost like you play!”

“Nope,” Galira passes it back. “I’m just good at it. Baxdol, have fun,” She aims her next pass to Baxdol, which results in him being hit in the head instead. 

It’s been a long time since Penny has felt this way. Has she ever? She’s on a beautiful beach on a whole new world with people she’s never met, but they socialize with her like it’s been a lifetime together like brothers and sisters with a bond that runs in their blood. They’ve welcomed her differently than anyone else has in her life. Kids were never easy at schools back home, and she was a teenager with adult Avengers, who, of course, welcomed her, but never had she met people her own age like this. There isn’t quite as much as a….useless feeling. The Avengers, a lot, felt all-powerful to the girl. While these teens, these people she is starting to consider as her friends, are powerful, she is not beyond or below them. She is with them. Penny is with someone-well, people. She was looking at Galira when she thought of how accepted she felt. The way the sun shone on the girl’s curls made her pause, and the light makes her eyes have a depth and a glow never seen before. A sun-kissed being with a smile brighter than the mega-star which gives them warmth...She _ is _ the warmth. She is...almost like her warmth, in a way. Why did that make sense to Penny? Why is Penny still looking at the girl like that? The girl who crashed on her planet and stole her sight for every existing second, it felt like?

At one point, Penny and some of them run to the shore and others go to the ocean. The water runs to greet her feet, the girl wiggling her toes and comprehending how soft the sand is. Softer than any she’s felt before, even though she hasn’t felt much sand in her life. The ocean’s water is a natural friend to Penny, who dreams of the sea and all of its majesty’s mystery’s and pleasures. Oh, how her heartstrings are played by the sight of laughter, joy, and so much soul. She can’t stop smiling when Ikali exists in her sight, the same for Galira who can’t seem to stop glowing. Kindha is twirling his girlfriend around while she laughs, Sovial and Astoss tease Baxdol, who proceeds to roast Astoss for once in his life, surprisingly not resulting in immediate death. Why does this feel like a family? Why does it? She has a family. She has Aunt May...Okay, maybe not a big family. The Avengers are a team...and, yes, she guessed a family. Families did fight. Families did have moments of bonding and kindness. But this...was beyond what May or the Avengers were. This was all beyond anything of Terra-Earth, which was it? She’s getting used to Terra. She’s getting used to this. She likes getting used to this new terrain, the unknown that is increasingly the known. 

Penny has no fear. She does not fear the unknown. 

She does not fear it when she sees the Chamanoan sun, the Jalasian sky, Ikali’s smile, or Galira’s eyes. 

* * *

That changes by sunset. Now, Penny has fear. 

A conference-slash-dinner was being called, one of greater-than-usual importance. Apparently, it was a thing to dress up a bit, so she’d been practically groomed in every way. Dressing up, she supposed, meant to really dress up. However, she didn’t do that much, so maybe this was normal. Either way, Penny was fancy. The gown she wore flowed down straight to the floor, just barely touching the icy cold ground. Speaking of icy, her dress was blue as if it  _ was _ ice. The skirt was silky in texture and how it dropped from her waist, but its appearance was more like tulle with a slight ombre that darkened just a bit as it made its way to the bottom. The top was also unique, with a solid navy blue sweetheart neckline underneath the second layer which was mostly transparent. Native Jalasian crystals that resembled opals and some more closely to sapphires were embedded in the fabric that went up to the very start of her neck and trailed down her arms to the wrists. It felt like a ball gown, or at least by her standards, but it definitely didn’t have the puffiness of ball gown skirts that showed grandeur, but the crystals made up for it. You would’ve thought she was going to an extravagant ball or New Year’s Eve in the capital of Panem from the Hunger Games. 

That’s what Tony was sure of. 

He stops dead in his tracks, on the way to some boutique he was being escorted to. Something about some dinner? Most people would’ve dubbed his closet as huge, but bringing a suit was nowhere near his concern. Was he wearing a suit? What were they expecting him to wear? Tony didn’t really know as the stylist beside him was swiftly explaining some facts, he had zoned out when he caught sight of the teenage girl. That...was her, right? “Penny?”

When she does turn around, his brain cannot help but halt, and anyone would’ve been surprised that it wasn’t with a metaphorical screech or without physically running into something. He sees the girl turn her head and it’s all shock. It’s like she’s aged five years into a mature young woman-well, she was kinda a young woman, but she was seventeen and, yeah, Tony still felt like she was a kid. But her hair was in an updo beyond comprehension, her eyelids had the most intense pigment of matte black he’s ever seen (don’t get him started on the rest of this girl’s makeup, it looked like ten makeup artists had collaborated on her poor face), her nails were longer and glossy, and how was she supposed to eat or even move her lips with the intensity of that lipstick? 

“Mr. Stark?” Penny says as he starts coming towards her. She’s pretty much scared, in a way, because he looks both like a confused puppy and like he’s seen a ghost. It’s a surprise to her that she can still knit her brows in confusion with everything that had been done to them. The palace offered one of their stylist teams to Penny, who the other kids on task force were getting done by right now. The girl had never felt so pampered and gorgeous in her life. They treated her hair so that it was glossier and healthier than it has ever been in her life, the skin on her face was freshly moisturized and even cleared up (it was treated to stand the monstrous amount of makeup on her face), they had done everything she could’ve needed. She felt like an elite model, which was unlike her, but she could smile about her new look with teeth that were even whiter than before. 

“I- _ wow _ ...For a second, I couldn’t tell it was you-you’re literally in, what, three-inch heels?” Is all Tony can will out of his mouth, especially because he doesn’t know what to say. 

“Actually, they’re just half an inch, Mr. Stark. They decided that I didn’t need to wear obnoxious shoes to go with the dress.”

“Ah. Well, you look beautiful,” he grins at her warmly and supportively. She looked absolutely gorgeous, even though she always was and they’d done a hell of a lot of makeup for a teenage girl. It just looked like she’d grown up, a blink of an eye and she was six years older, and that was actually phasing to him. 

“Thank you, Mr. Stark.” It would’ve shown that her face was a little bit more red than before, but the makeup blinded you to anything happening on the skin itself. She was really going to need more clearing treatment for every single zit and blackhead and whitehead that spawned due to the full-blown-face. 

“Wow, Penny,” comes Natasha’s voice. Even the Black Widow, a woman in her thirties trained to seduce , was not done-up as wildly as Penny was, dressed in a forest green silk dress with thick straps that were off-shoulders, a grand cape with gold damask falling from the back. “That’s definitely quite the look.”

“Oh,” Penny turns her attention to Natasha. “Thank you! Do you, uh, have any idea what this ‘dinner’ is about?”

“It might just be a formality or a birthday or something,” the redhead guesses. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

“Just my nervous nature,” the teenage girl grits out. She would bite her lip, but she feels like she has a secondary pair of lips with the amount of lipstick on, not to mention that she doesn’t want any on her snow-white teeth. 

“Well what about that conference? Hm?” Tony asks. “You said there was a government conference meeting thing, and I don’t know what that’s about, none of us were requested to be there.”

“Maybe it’s just new intel about the other countries. I think that’s what it is, and since I’m shadowing the terrorist task force, I’m included,” Penny assumes with confidence, something that tends to be hard for her to do, but today was her lucky day. “As for the whole insane dressing up thing, the dinner comes after for something else, I guess.”

“Yeah, that’s probably it,” Natasha agrees. 

Tony hums. “So where’s Clint? Putting ten dollops of gel in his hair for fifteen minutes straight?” He jokes. 

“Yeah, actually,” she smirks. 

“Oh, God.”

“Yeah, and I’m the one who puts on makeup, a knife-holding garter, and has to curl her hair.”

Penny blinks and then she’s there: Galira. She didn’t take too much longer than her, but that seemed impossible because the girl looked...insane. Well, no, not insane as in crazy-insane, but elegant. Sci-fi elegant. Padme Amidala, but not quite. The outfit’s main color was yellow, not a shock since that’s her power’s color, part of her heroine name, even part of her hair under the sun. On the outer tier of the dress, both bodice and skirt, the shade of yellow is like the first shade that comes to your mind, but not too neon-like and not too orangey. Underneath, however, lies a layer of the same fabric, but in the color of goldenrod, showing through only a cut-out in the shape of a triangle. The pinnacle of the triangle meets the beginning of the bodice and works its way down to the very trim of the dress to show the inner fabric. Her sleeves are long and at the wrist starts a triangle that reaches the start of her middle finger. The most unique part of the outfit, however, is not even at the front. Behind her, starting at the beginning of her back is fabric that matches her outer dress fabric, and it’s almost like a shield, but more round and curling just a bit so that the roll meets her hips. At the very top, the backing is like a teardrop’s pinnacle.

She’s staring. Penny shouldn’t be, but she’s stunned and in a state of awe she finds silly once she realizes she’s in it. It’s shaken off by the time Galira is walking quickly towards her with a giant smile, showing off her pearly white teeth, her bioluminescent freckles shining with it.

  
  


“Penny, you look incredible. I think this is the craziest look I’ve ever seen them do on any of my friends,” she is speaking with lips that had a more subtle and blended matte red lipstick to them in comparison to her friend’s. 

“I-I’m speechless, too, I’ve never worn anything like this in my life-half the time, I can’t even French braid my own hair,” Penny finishes with a laugh. 

“Gal! Penny!” Comes a call. It’s Astoss who has strolled in with Sovial at the end of the hallway, the dark-skinned girl in an edgy jumpsuit and Sovial in a stiff and short-sleeved dress. 

“Shall we?” Galira smirks, gesturing with a hand illuminated ever-so-finely with shimmer while her nails are a glossy amber hue. 

Merely a moment after Galira and Penny have headed off to join their friends, Thor comes up behind Tony and Natasha. “You know, I think they like each other,” He declares to the two. 

“Well, I’d like if you don’t sneak up behind me so soundly,” Tony retorts. 

“Mmm, Penny definitely has it for Galira, if not both of them,” Natasha nods in agreement. “You can see how nervous Pen is around her. It’s cute.”

“What?” Tony blurts cluelessly. “Like, like-like? She like-likes someone?” He blinks. 

“Stark, look at them, they’re like yin and yang,” Thor points out. “Not black and white, but the introvert and the extrovert, the blonde and the brown-haired, they’re compatible like that lunch box container top you had so much trouble clicking with the box the other day.”

“You’re still on that bento box thing?”

“Focus, Shellhead,” Natasha lowly teases. “You see it, don’t you?”

“Uh,” Tony pauses for a few seconds, still able to see the teenagers walking away, noticing how Sovial’s dress was mostly backless and that Cikkma was wearing tall pumps on her feet. “Yeah, I see it. I’m just glad it’s not one of the boys.”

“They’re _ harmless _ , Tony.”

“Are you sure? I wasn’t harmless at their age.”

“You were trouble at their age.”

“I think he still is,” Thor adds. 

“Is there a reason we’re assuming two kids hanging around each other a lot immediately means they have feelings for each other?” Tony finally contradicts. 

“Mm. I suppose you’re right,” Thor admits. “Galira may not even like girls-but I’ve seen that look before.”

Tony’s a mixture of confused and scared. Why would he know what a girl’s “look” is anyways? “Thor, what have you been up to if you know specifically the looks women give to each other if they’re attracted to each other?”

Thor ignores his friend’s question of suspicion and continues to tell his observation. “A year or however long it’s been back, an old friend of mine had reunited with another old friend. For a moment I paused and saw so much love in my friend’s eyes. Two days later, they’re dating.”

“One couple’s scenario is not all’s scenario,” Tony debates.

“Yeah, Thor. Snark-ass, there, surprisingly enough, is right,” Natasha cuts in. She spots Clint coming down stairs with Steve and Rhodey. 

“Alright, well, that’s just my scenario,” Thor grumbles in defeat.

“Nat,” Clint greets his girlfriend once he reaches the end of the elegant stairs. “You know what this is about?” He inquires once he and the others meet up with the trio. 

“No,” The woman replies simply. “I can only hope it’s nothing crazy. Don’t exactly know this culture.”

“This is the most Earth-like and Asgard-like planet I’ve ever visited or known of in the whole universe,” Thor states. “I’m sure it’s just an excuse to drink and discuss politics.”

* * *

Meanwhile, as Penny takes a seat in a conference room very similar to the one she was in just a few days ago, the girl is starting to think everything is going to be a little bit more than just drinking and discussing politics. 

The table is pitch black, huge, and prepped with holographic spawns for their use, along with all the coordinating technology, not to mention that on the rounded walls twenty feet from the table on both sides is a technical station with screens tracking other nations’ military activity, planetary defense shields, and many other things of great importance. Galira sits on one side of Penny, the right, and Kindha is on her left. 

“So, is your father going to make a scene like last time?” Galira smirks while teasing her friend quietly. 

“What did his father do?” Penny turns her head to Kindha. 

Before the poor boy could explain, the curly-haired girl replies, “His father is a five-star general, among the very best of the best, but he definitely has a way of showing his opinion no matter what.”

“If you see me slouch to the floor, you’ll know why,” Kinhda murmurs, looking down at his feet since his chair, which levitates above the floor and scoots in by floating with a gentle whir, was not tucked completely up against the table. 

Penny’s laugh comes out in a soft chuckle, but her mouth forces itself closed immediately when she spots the President and a few other people. The whole group of people in the room stand up, her included, and he then gestures for them to sit back down. 

President Naka, sitting at the end of the table to Penny’s left starts off by sighing into his palm, removing it after a moment which created tense anticipation in the room. “There’s been a development,” He announces. “Nyumbia has been silenced.”

Faces in the room paled and some backs rested against their seats. That could be perceived in maybe five different ways. 

“The nation is radio silent. We have three military ships that are assisting, and that’s the only place where the bloodthirsty news outlets will get their pound of flesh from, so we pretty much control what gets out to them because we know Khallans refuse to help them and Qorshi has been practicing isolationism with anyone except us, but they’re far away and have other priorities,” Naka begins smoothly. “We suspect they have made a new weapon’s breakthrough due to the mining of the Eulcor metropolis. They’ve scraped up every rock, stone, and turned perfectly fresh air into the worst conditions possible, and you would’ve thought that the air would’ve killed all their slaves and assets, anyways.”

“I suppose Qorshi’s isolationism is working since they’re not the ones getting their soldiers killed.”

Ah, yes, and so Kindha Kaloba Wants To Die Episode 87 begins. 

The president doesn’t regard his commentary yet. “Our spies have found out that this is not their only move. As I am told, they want to destroy our embassy in Talluba where five hundred people work. We’ve already evacuated Ambassador Genora as a precaution, but to get our other assets out would draw too much attention, and the ambassador returns home regularly, anyways. Defenses out there I don’t believe will be enough. With parental permission, I’m sending one of the six teen terrorist task force squads out there on top of security specialists.”

“It’s not going to be my son’s squadron,” General Kaloba firmly demands. “ _ Toris _ ?”

The president glares, but not in hate. “We’ll see.”

“The ambassador should have stayed,” A new voice arrives in the conversation. 

Penny, along with others, turns her eyes to the man of which the voice comes from. He sits at the other end of the table, looking dark both metaphorically and quite literally. 

Naka scoffs. “Stayed to die, Secretary Qallit?” He raises his brows. His thumb rests under his jawline and his index finger goes up against the edge of his cheek. 

“No, Mr. President, to carry on with her duty. Would you call the threat imminent?” Qallit inquires. 

“We have enough intelligence to determine their intentions,” Another general speaks. “We also also need a squadron to escort the spies safely.”

“Isn’t that the embassy security detail’s job?” The defense secretary, a mature woman who appears graceful and calm knits her brows in confusion, her long coppery-amber hair hanging down, looking like it’s been perfectly permed just minutes ago.

“If she stayed at the embassy,” Qallit cuts into the conversation once more. “She could’ve directed defenses on the ground. Last time we had a threat like this, they jammed our coms, therefore, we need our forces right there. We are useless from a distance.”

“Qallit, to keep them on the ground is a death sentence, Genora lives every day with a scar on her back that proves it,” Naka reminds him with stunned eyes-he’s offended for the woman. 

“That makes her a  _ survivor _ ,” Qallit stubbornly returns. “She was in the military, that is what saved her life and will save others! If she is in control of what happens on the ground, they will live with minimal injuries. Besides, what happens if the ship is attacked, hm? Did you even think of that-they’re able to track our signatures and can just blow up the ship?”

“The secretary has a point,” A different general murmurs. “It might have been safer to hide everyone in the bunker and when it’s clear, they’re rescued.”

Penny swallows. She would be hesitant to say she agreed. Informed? She’s nowhere near informed. She’s been here four days, that’s not a timeline to expertise. Hell, she isn’t an expertise of politics on Terra, either. 

“That puts more heads on the ground for them to shoot and more coffins for families to afford-so absolutely not,” The President feels like the twig he thought Qallit would be: ready to snap. He now understands that being wrong is not a chance to take with the lives at risk, even among the tension already at the table. “What’s done is done,” He declares. “Protocol is already set. Angels of Sky is already in motion. What I need is a setup of extra security in Talluba, maybe even more places. Think of Prawil, Undabi, Zubiel, Arevalla, I  _ need _ to have those locations secure.”

“They’re all weapons development cities,” Kindha whispers to Penny. “Profitable, populated, and popular.”

“I am considering Squadron Sky or Squadron Duel to take the task of assisting the embassy.” He looks over at a group of teenagers that is at the far right of the table, far from him. “Captain Veora, can you do that?” Naka asks somewhat softly. 

The young woman, with loosely curly hair and a thick snow of freckles on her face, nods. “Yes, Mr. President,” She confirms with bold confidence. 

“Galira was dating her, at one point,” Kindha smirks as he says it as quietly as possible to Penny. 

The blonde girl blinks. “What?” She liked girls?

Galira rolls her eyes. “Shut up and listen, you idiot,” She also keeps her voice down, then drumming her thumbs across the table. 

“Captain Andra, how about you?”

The boy the President refers to swallows. “Sir, our group, as a whole, has been down on its game,” He admits, eyes floating to the table in shame. “I don’t believe we should go this time.”

The man weakly smiles. “Don’t be embarrassed, Ruvin. You’ve been doing a good job,” He reassures, then looking to the girl he had previously addressed. “Captain Veora,” President Naka calls upon him. “Your group leaves tomorrow at dawn, assuming you may go. Sleep well.”

“Thank you, Mr. President.”

“Homeland defenses need to be on high alert,” Secretary Klomina, the one who inquired about embassy security, voices her opinion. “Squadrons Obsidian, Soul, and Guardian are my votes.”

Penny is curious. “What squadron are we?” She leans over to Galira. 

“Squadron Guardian...I’m the captain.”

Her jaw drops faster than she could blink.

“Captain Rokhanna, Captain Zudana, and Captain Gahn, would you be up for this task?”

The two girls and boy, Galira included, nod and reply a, “Yes, Mr. President,” simultaneously. 

“Mr. President, have you considered consulting Captain Danvers?” A general inquires, a shorter male who has not spoken before. 

“Already did,” Naka nods. “In fact, she’s ensuring Ambassador Genora’s safe return to Jalasia,” He looks his counterpart dead in the eye. “ _ Qallit _ .”

Penny hasn’t really seen Baxdol the whole time, but she suddenly catches a glimpse of him and all she sees of him is that he discreetly mouths the words mockingly, “Yeah, Qallit,” and she forces herself harshly to not laugh. Wait, is he wearing green eyeshadow? 

The president taps the table with his hand. “Squadron Sky will be up by sunrise, and I expect the same of Squadrons Obsidian, Guardian, and Soul. We’ll have you in three strategic locations on stand-by, to be sent to you tonight, ready to be dispatched if needed.” He stands up, and then does the group. “Let’s go eat!” 

Penny doesn’t know how to word anything, but she eventually gets at least some words out of her mouth as she walks next to Galira in a hallway of pillars. “Why didn’t you tell me you were a captain?” She tries to voice it in a way that sounds more curious than confused or even offended. 

Galira clicks her tongue. “Um, well, I didn’t want you to be intimidated,” She answers awkwardly. 

Her face literally scrunches in confusion, something well worth doing, even with the layers of makeup. 

“I-well, being a captain generally means a lot here. Hell, if you’re elected by your group to be captain, you get a lot of benefits if you’re a captain long enough-and I mean, like, living benefits for you and your family, diplomatic opportunities. Just really good stuff for your future,” The curly-haired girl rambles, tucking one hand in the other. 

Penny nods. “It’s like the United States military.”

“And before you ask, yes, I was dating Venusia Veonora, but it lasted barely half a year. She’s gorgeous, she’s got the brains, the braun, but it didn’t work out...There’s gonna be someone else out there I think will work out with me, though.”

The blonde perceives her last sentence as very vague and leaves-you-wondering, but she doesn’t comment on it.

“One day.”

That was a good clarification. “So...this dinner-” Penny slowly starts to inquire.

“Secretary Klomina’s birthday. She’s an amazing woman-she was actually my teacher last year,” Galira smiles in glee, her hands untucking themselves as they continue to walk. 

“Wait,” Penny starts and then blinks. “She was your teacher? How did she go from teacher to politician?”

“First of all, she’s not too much of a stereotypical politician. Second of all, when opportunity knocks, sweetheart, when opportunity knocks.”

Upon arriving among the mass of people to go to the elevator, Galira waves at some of their friends. “We’ll be in this one, ok?” She lets them know so they can come in with them, if they wanted. When there is no response, the girl shrugs and just the two of them enter one elevator, set it to the 162nd floor, and practically vanish on the way up to higher ground. 

For a moment, there is silence, but between the two, it was not unexpected that it would be Galira to break the freezing ice. “Did I call you ‘sweetheart’?”

Oh, yeah, that did happen. Penny took the term to surprise mostly because the girl has never used it before, but it was no big deal of any sort. Maybe it was just how she talked. “Yeah, you did,” She nods just a bit. 

“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I did that,” Galira apologizes with an embarrassed tone. “I...know I might come off as a girl who doesn’t make many mistakes...but I do. Becoming captain is just proof I’ve minimized them. That’s why Baxdol isn’t captain.” She finishes with a laugh. “All he’d do is recite what Terrans call ‘vines’.”

“Oh my god,” Penny snorts. 

Galira clears her throat to imitate. “LiStEn Up, YoU cLoUd Of A bItCh!  _ LiStEn Up!” _

It’s terrible luck. They arrive to their destination floor and as the door opens up, comes out a great snort from Penny, resulting in her slapping her palm against her mouth while some stares are earned from outside, including a few of the Avengers twenty feet away. 

“Yeah, Penny, why are you laughing?” Galira tilts her head. 

That gets rewarded with a stab in the hip by an elbow.

* * *

To Penny’s surprise, the dinner went quite well, mostly because she realized that Carol was here and the girl had wanted to catch up with her. If she had to rank them, the second highlight was that sweet Ikali was there, almost being the spotlight of the room over the Secretary. It’s an elite scene, here, but at least it was happy and many people seemed to have good will. However, she wouldn’t know unless she had lived here before. Perhaps Galira knew, especially considering how she talked about the benefits of being a captain, but even she had it better than Penny could ever imagine. It wasn’t about May or Ned or MJ or anyone, but she has an apartment while Galira has a house. Big, dirty, and overpriced city versus a small, clean, and decently priced city. She wouldn’t even approach the fact that Galira still had two living parents and that Penny didn’t. Bad memories were worthless to bring up. 

The process of getting undressed and into a silk pajama set gifted to her by the palace stylists was pretty much nuts, but she had to. Penny carefully undos every nook and cranny of unzipping or unbuttoning, which wasn’t that much, but it took some silly time. The dress was a simple invisible zipper from the back, and then two side bra-like clasps that supported a light corset, not that she needed one, but it was already built in. Then she was given an undergarment set, which had no zippers or buttons, but even those, even if they were comfortable and supportive for her chest, were a pain to take off on top of the dress and such. She puts everything away into the spacious walk-in closet and heads to the bathroom where she did her face (why couldn't Terra have as good face products?).

It takes her a whole fifteen minutes, but she finishes and flops onto her bed, her bed which is outrageously comfortable. She crawls underneath the covers, her body lifting each and every throw pillow up just to roll off the bed onto the floor. Poor pillows. Her body snuggles and curls, her head resting soundly on the soft pillow case that felt good on her skin. Sleep is a wonderful thing, especially now that the long day has ended and she can-

A ringing erupts, and it’s from her phone. 

The lids that have closed over her eyes pop open in an instant. 

_Ned_. 

Oh, god, she has not contacted Ned every since she left. Ned must be worried sick and fangirling and not able to stop thinking about what’s going on every second-how could’ve she have done this?

Penny nearly falls out of bed to get her phone. She swipes it up, practically smacks her phone, and up comes a facetime rather than a phone call, but her energy was at too much of a minimum to realize it. “Hang on, Ned, I’m sorry, give me a minute!”

The girl dashes up and hears him tell her to take her time. She snatches a holographic device from the desk and brings it to her bed, putting her phone underneath. Ned’s face shows up in the air, the light of the holographic making her clear, glowing face visible, as well as the silk robe which was patterned with blue flowers on a cream background. “Hey, Ned,” She forces a smile. 

“Penny, where have you been?” He exclaims in concern. “You said you’d call me sooner! I didn’t want to bother you, so I only waited until today to call you!”

The guilt hits like a rocket. “Oh, God, I know, Ned, I know,” Penny rubs her face in stress. “You wouldn’t believe how busy I’ve been and all the things I’ve seen and all the stuff I know-”

“It’s okay, Penny,” The boy reassures, flipping like a switch both in his voice and his face. “Well, tell me about it! How cool is it to go off-planet?!” He instantly launches into fanboy mode. 

For the next thirty minutes, Penny explains tons and tons of things about Chamano, the nation of Jalasia, and many other interesting things like how she was shadowing a teen terrorist task force squadron, their capital city was beautiful beyond belief, and how she can still remember how the ocean felt on her feet at the blue beaches. She says everything with an immortal smile, practically etched onto her face. The girl can’t help it. She never had a chance. 

But then came a question that set her brain into reboot mode:

“When are you coming back?”

Penny launches a pregnant pause, big-eyed and with a gap between her lightly tinted lips. “I...don’t know,” Her next word is a terrified whisper, “Ned.”

The boy looks at her as if she was talking gibberish. “What do you mean you don’t know?” Ned asks in shock. “Did something happen-do they need you?!”   
  


Do they need her? Did they even want her? Those were both simple, yet deep questions she needed to answer to lead to her future. Penny doesn’t know how to answer the ones internally. “No, Ned, I have to get up at dawn tomorrow, we have to defend the city-Squadron Guardian and I-” She explains. 

“How long will that last?” Ned re-adjusts so he’s sitting in Indian pose with an obviously nervous look in his brown, fearful eyes. 

“I don’t know. Probably just the whole day,” Penny guesses. 

“You’re not staying forever, are you?”

“What? No!”

“Penny, I can tell you’re lying. You don’t know. I think you’re thinking about it.”

She loathes that her best friend is correct. How does she look him in the eye and say what she wants to say? For a moment, she waits with a scattered and jumbled brain. “Ned, I’ve fallen in love with this place. The planet, the city, the people!”

“The people-like what people? What people do you love besides your aunt, MJ, and I?”

“Galira Gahn!” Penny is too late to realize she yelled the name once she did, slapping her hand against her face for the second time of the night. 

Ned’s facial expression falls from tense to crestfallen. “Galira? The girl you met on the first day?”

Her eyes of blue-green fall away from him and all she can do is nod. 

“What, is this like a Disney movie, Penny?”

“N-no,” Penny looks back at him. “I like her, Ned, I like her a lot! It’s too bad I don’t have the fucking gall to ask her out on a date! Besides, you’re right, I can’t stay forever-”

“I think you want to!” Ned suspects from light years away. “You can’t just leave New York forever-”

Penny snaps like a twig, a very irritable twig, something she’d immediately regret doing once the words end and she comprehends what she’s done. “You’re saying that because you can’t leave!”

Ned is taken back, more than he has been from her in a long time. Maybe ever. “I know I must be the nerdiest, geekiest, and most dumb-seeming boy you know, Penny,” He starts. 

Penny knows she’s fucked up now. “What-”

“But even if I went to the coolest place I could ever dream of, I would not abandon my home for some fantasy!” 

“This isn’t a fantasy, this is real!” Penny quickly retorts in a burst of anger, anger that shows in her eyes in a way never seen, especially considering the fact that it was towards him. Her best friend. 

“Well, it’s yours. Not mine. Yours...I love you, Penny.”

The call has ended. 

In the blink of an eye, a conversation that came out of nowhere hurt a friendship that was really one of the only things she had. 

Penny practically jams her fingers through her hair and on her scalp, yanking her hair upwards before she just lets her head collapse in the palms of her hands. Once her lids come to a close, water wets her face starting from her under eyes and down to her jawline. Did she just ruin a lifetime friendship?

The thing about her and Ned is that they didn’t really fight much at all. They had a lot in common, like their nerdy and chill personalities, and don’t even get someone started on how fucking smart they both were, even if it was in the shadow of their “inferior” if you asked some stuck-up football-playing jock or a girl with constantly straightened hair and nails she cared more about than her friends. They were both unliked and teased, even when they were in elementary school. Like some bullied kids do, the two gravitated towards each other and into a close friendship they maintained all the way until now. No, it wasn’t over, right? Was Penny overthinking it? But what if she under-thought it?

A boisterous, ugly groan escapes her, displaying emotion far, far beyond a groan about getting out of bed in the morning. It was there for all to see, and the only one that qualified as “all” was her. 

Or so it should have been. 

_ Knock, knock, knock. _ “Penny?”

She presses her fingers against her scalp, rubbing for a moment. Absolutely wonderful timing, but it wasn’t his fault he heard her obnoxious cry of frustration and agony. Time to wipe the tears away and somehow make herself look presentable. “Yeah, Steve? You can come in.”

The door opens and he’s like her, dressed down for the night into more comfortable clothes. For him, it was some navy sweats with waffle knitting and a pair of hilarious narwhal slippers on his feet. Blame Tony, who called him a Capsicle, so he found the cold-weather whales on a pair of shoes to be quite fitting as a perfect birthday joke. To make it even better, they were super comfortable, so Steve wore them anyways. What he wore on his face, though, was the most important thing: concern. He was a generally thoughtful man, and it was amazing for Penny to see what he was like behind just the name and standard of Captain America to live up to. Since she’d come to be a team trainee, he was kinda like the uncle. Not in Ben’s way where he was her only father figure in the whole wide world since her true one passed away in a plane crash, of all horrible and random tragedies, but in the way Steve would sit down and offer her almonds or offer to help her with her homework. It was in the way he challenged her just enough that it wasn’t shoving Penny off the edge and how he makes sure she knows she did well at her Avengers training. Part of it wasn’t even that, part of it was kinda the vibe. Sometimes it was more old grandpa-like when he squinted in confusion at a Nintendo Switch Sam was playing with Bucky one day. She didn’t even want to think of how he dead-ass started off with saying, “Well back in my day-” and hearing four or five simultaneous groans and him frowning with a shut mouth.

Steve gently pushes so that the door leaves a thin crack and is not closed. He comes over to the bed where she sat. “I’ve heard groans of frustration, of not wanting to get out of bed, and from that I’ve beat you pretty bad when sparring. That was something ten times as concerning, though.”

“You would think that for such an advanced planet that they would have soundproof walls,” Penny murmurs in both pure deflection and remark. She had been able to get the tears away from under her eyes where eye cream had been applied earlier. Not like it was needed for her youthful eyes that barely had a fine line, but one of the stylist women said it was better to start early and she didn’t see why not to follow her advice. 

“Mm, Tony really has rubbed off on you, hasn’t he?” Steve observes. He sits next to her at the edge of her bed where she had been kneeling, but she’s now on her own bottom with her legs pulled to her chest. “But are you ok?” his voice softened. 

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” Penny is quick to say something as dismissive as that. Between tiredness and sadness, talking much wasn’t on her agenda, but she didn’t want to tell him to go away. She’d feel guilty. 

“Because I thought I heard yelling coming down the hall. Someone in here?” His eyes glance around. 

“Oh. No. That was Ned, I was on a holo-call with him,” She shortly explains. 

“Yelling?” Steve inquires further. 

“I…” Penny hesitates which leads into a long, awkward pause. “We got into a fight,” She clarifies quietly. 

Steve nods in understanding. “I’m sorry, Pen. You two ok?”

She is tempted to just flop back on her bed and let every single tear and noise of distress out. Against all odds, she’s mouse-quiet. “Dunno.”

“Most friends fight, Penny,” Steve reassures. “Bucky and I fought as kids. I was small, skinny, and wanted to fight the world.” He shook his head a little at the memories over many meaningful things, but also a lot of silly things. One time he got ahold of a gun and shot it at a lightbulb in the street and that spawned an argument. On the other hand, Bucky accidentally pushed him into the Hudson, once, which was pretty shitty for his scrawny, asthmatic self. Let’s just say he ended up somehow mad like a tiny, barky pomeranian. 

“Yeah, but I really hurt him,” it sounded like Penny was gonna cry again, but it wasn’t quite at that point, yet. She realizes how weak she must sound and that in itself might make her cry out of even more frustration and flustered-ness. All she wanted to do was sleep. 

“Hey, I’ve met Ned, he’s a nice kid. I’m sure if you two just apologize to each other that things will be okay.” Partially, Steve was guessing, especially since he didn’t know the boy well like he knew Penny, but he still believed in what he was saying. 

Penny is a bit slow to reply, but when she finally does, it’s without confidence. “Maybe…”

Steve frowns at her continuing hopelessness. “You need a hug?” It was worth a shot, he knew she was a bubbly kind of girl who liked really liked them. 

She doesn’t reply because Penny’s in a state where it’s hard to bring things out of her mouth. Why can’t she open up? More importantly, why couldn’t she have not screwed up?

When Steve hesitantly puts an arm around her torso, though, Penny leans to her left into him, closing her eyes and is still wordless. Her thoughts are her biggest power: she just lost her best friend because she was stupid. She was so stupid. 

Half a minute later, his arm falls away and he stands up, heading to the door. “Let me know if you need anything, ok? I’m always here to talk,” Steve offers. “If not me, Tony or Nat or someone?”

“I’m alright, Steve,” Penny murmurs in response. 

He says goodnight and leaves. 

It’s finally over. She can flop back onto the bed, and she does. Penny’s back hits the duvet and mattress, then squirming and squiggling to get underneath. Her body curls and curls, pulling all the covers close to her, practically making a cocoon. All you see is a head of hair, a head of hair attached to a brain in pain. If you just walked inside her room, you wouldn’t know she’s hurting. Her hurting is in silence, but at least it quells as her consciousness leaves and only then Penny is finally able to fall asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING, I THANK YOU A SECOND TIME BUT NOTE: 
> 
> It came to my head really easily as I was watching Arrested Development: Venusia Veonora looks like maybe season 3 or 4 Maeby. Idk about a lot of other people I mention oop. 
> 
> Rokhanna: row-kuh-nuh
> 
> Zudana: zoo-dahn-nuh
> 
> also yeah it's kinda a crime for steve to half hug penny before tony does in this story cause irondad rights but dont worry penny will have tons more interactions with him soon, as well as other avengers!
> 
> A N Y W A Y S thank you for the third time for reading and an update will come soon (or, you know, in 3 more months. Don't plan on that but I suck)


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